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Hyperthreading

post #1 of 49
10/24/03 at 8:55pm
Thread Starter 
I saw a site selling what appears to be a Clevo which claims that hyperthreading will not be enabled unless I buy the comp with the OS already installed.

Is this BS, or something I should really be concerned about?

You can check the site here.
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post #2 of 49
10/24/03 at 9:09pm
you can enable it in the bios no problem
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post #3 of 49
10/24/03 at 9:11pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by litehedded
you can enable it in the bios no problem
Thanks!
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post #4 of 49
10/24/03 at 9:15pm
yup
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post #5 of 49
10/24/03 at 9:55pm
Make sure you enable it BEFORE you install Windows too or it wont work.
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post #6 of 49
10/24/03 at 10:04pm
You can always switch WinXP to multiprocessor (which, techically, is what hyperthreading is) by upgrading the ACPI driver. Done it many a time.
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post #7 of 49
10/24/03 at 10:07pm
would have to be xp pro
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post #8 of 49
10/25/03 at 1:41am
Quote:
Originally posted by litehedded
would have to be xp pro
That is not true.

Windows XP HOME can also use HT. Also, various modern Linux distros can use it, too.

Also, Windows 2000 can, but it is unsupported (though I might be wrong, I've never run win2k w/ an HT machine, but I've heard people can - take it for what its worth).

-myrkat
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post #9 of 49
10/25/03 at 2:13am
I ran 2k on my P4 3.0 for a short time.. as far as i can tell, 2k worked fine...
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post #10 of 49
10/25/03 at 2:36am
I'm not trying to bust anyones bubble here, but there's a lack of hyperthreading facts in here.

Hyperthreading works by appearing as two processors.

Operating systems use this by using multiprocessor kernels that can use both execution threads at the same time. Same for Linux, XP Pro, NT, Server 2000 and 2003. If it has a multiprocessor kernel, it will work with Hyperthreading.

If it does NOT have a multiprocessing kernel - like XP Home, 98, etc - then the processor will still work fine, it just won't take advantage of the hyperthreading feature, just like it wouldn't take advantage of actually having two processors.

Hyperthreading is, pardon the pun, over-hyped anyway. Very few applications even use multi threaded features (Photoshop is one that does). It's doubtful most users would even notice it.
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post #11 of 49
10/25/03 at 2:39am
thank you
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post #12 of 49
10/25/03 at 3:03am
but does ht reduce the power of the pc?
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post #13 of 49
10/25/03 at 3:55am
no! blarg
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post #14 of 49
10/25/03 at 3:57am
I'd certainly notice it, 99% of my work is in 3dsMax which is almost fully multithreaded. Even has a pref's checkbox to enable it
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post #15 of 49
10/25/03 at 3:57am
nothing noticeable thats for sure.
and can't you manually set the affinity for processes even if they are not designed to take advantage of hyperthreading or multiprocessing?
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post #16 of 49
10/25/03 at 4:59am
Quote:
Originally posted by litehedded
nothing noticeable thats for sure.
and can't you manually set the affinity for processes even if they are not designed to take advantage of hyperthreading or multiprocessing?
Not without a kernel that supports two CPU's. In XP Home, for example, you'll only see one CPU no matter what.
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post #17 of 49
10/25/03 at 5:07am
i know i mean in 2000 or xp pro. even if an application cant deal with hyperthreading you can manually move it to the other virtual processor right? in the task manager?
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post #18 of 49
10/25/03 at 5:12am
Quote:
Originally posted by litehedded
i know i mean in 2000 or xp pro. even if an application cant deal with hyperthreading you can manually move it to the other virtual processor right? in the task manager?
Not without seriously screwing it up.

There are certain apps out there that will allow you to set which processor it will run on before the app starts, and you can sometimes set some services to do this on boot. It's all academic - I seriously doubt you would see any performance advantage.
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post #19 of 49
10/25/03 at 5:56am
Thread Starter 
OK, to summarize:

I don't have to buy my OS preinstalled, I do have to enable HT in BIOS before I install the OS, and I need an OS that supports HT, like WinXP Pro, and not all software will make use of HT.

Have I got it all?
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post #20 of 49
10/25/03 at 6:03am
That's about the size of it.
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