Originally Posted by W0ef (Post 278213)

2500k is the best value for money you can buy for a gaming rig these days period.

While I fully understand people with a 2600k like to stress the fact it supports hyperthreading this feature is absolutely irrelevant for gaming, since no game supports it or will likely support it in the forseeable future.

HT is nice if you like to run several apps at the same time, what it does is basically split up a single processor so it can run two or more threads in parrallel. Gaming fully stresses (or should stress if it is properly optimized) all cores so hyperthreading would be kinda useless anyway.

Here´s a further explanation I took off another forum:

Hyperthreading is Intel's copyrighted term for Symmetric Multi Threading (there's something you can Google for and get good information). Symmetric multithreading is different than symmetric multiprocessing (multiple processors) for several reasons:

1. It's one processor that can process multiple threads at once, not actually two processors.

2. Since it's one processor, the two (or more) threads running share certain registers, L1 and L2 cache availability, etc.

3. Because they must share, there can be contention between the two parallel threads and so they must be scheduled (by the OS and by the processor prefetch logic) in an efficient manner.

Intel's hyperthreading has nothing to do with LONG pipelines, it instead has everything to do with multiple execution units in the processor itself. The P4 chips have seperate FPU, Integer, SSE, and SSE2 execution engines inside the core. Before Intel started using HT, only one of those execution engines could run at a time.

Thus, if an FPU instruction came through the pipes, the integer, SSE and SSE2 units were all inactive and just sat there waiting. With Intel's Hyperthreading, they now can allow two of those execution engines to run simultaneously. That doesn't DOUBLE your output, but it does increase it by a noticeable amount if you have unlike instructions that can be run parallel.

So for example, if you have multiple FPU instructions all streamed together, HT isn't going to help at all. If you have a mix of FPU, Integer and SSE that all needs to compute and the instructions are not dependant on eachother, they can be processed in parallel and can rip through them faster.

The absolute best case scenario is something like a 65% increase in processing ability because of cache coherency and branch prediction issues (so it never can actually double). Many multithreaded apps can see a 15-30% increase, basically all others see an average of zero

There are several older applications that will slow down when hyperthreading is enabled, mostly old multithreaded apps that were never actually meant to run in an SMT environment. These apps break off worker threads that are all interdependant of eachother, and often that scenario can make a Hyperthreaded processor stall out even worse than a normal processor would.

These apps are few and far between, and an SMT-aware operating system (Windows XP) can be forced to limit those threads to a single virtual processor in order to keep them from misbehaving and slowing down.

Both AMD and IBM are reportedly looking at SMT options as well, because most modern microprocessors have multiple execution engines that are (quite often) idling. Again, it has nothing to do with total pipeline length, it has only to do with the total number of seperate execution engines on the CPU core.



Basically, if you use heavy video programs or Photoshop (especially running them at the same time) HT would make a difference, for gaming, not so much.

Originally Posted by Rattlehead (Post 278035)

I apologise about Metro...you're right, I was a bit optimistic about 'maximum' settings...but high settings is easily possible on a dual core, no question.

I dunno...maybe you and I simply have different perspectives on what constitutes running a game well. I honestly can't see that in two years owning a fast quad core would lead to a disasterous gaming experience. (That's how I'm reading your post, but please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Tri sli? How many people have money to afford setups like that? It's not indicative of the average gaming rig.

Anyways, it's all swings and roundabouts at the end of the day. One way or another, we'll all have to upgrade sooner or later.

Originally Posted by Heliocon (Post 278283)

What I meant about quads is that in 2 years they will be bottom of the bucket cpus, it wont be disastrous, but he will have to upgrade his mobo to transition to ivy, the p67 mobos are already comparably more expensive thatn x58 etc. Now in 2 years a quad that has 8 threads will fair far better, and the components will be cheaper to buy now allowing a later upgrade (if he goes with G1 i7).

Originally Posted by Heliocon (Post 278017)

Yes because you have plenty of experience with this stuff to base your opinion on? 8 threads = alot better than 4 threads/cores. Your cpu has to sit and wait for your ram, in the meantime if you have an i7 it will be far more active/productive.

Originally Posted by TonyD (Post 278347)

Jayrc; if you want an unbiased opinion from a long-time AMD fan

Originally Posted by Rattlehead (Post 278352)

...
Sadly, I can't justify buying AMD over Intel right now.
...

Originally Posted by W0ef (Post 278292)

@ Heliocon

Whatever dude, while I would never claim to be a pro on Hyperthreading I did read into it quite a lot when I was deciding what processor to get next. Literally every forum I read stated the 2500k to be a much better choice bang for buck wise when it comes to gaming, period.

Seems like you just want to justify your e-peen i7-980x investment though (and yes that is an insult since you dont seem to pull any punches either)

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...ng-programming

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=665465

And about Bad Company 2:

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/30/413400.page

Some guy did a test on BFBC2 with HT on and off (see page 3), put it short, except for generating a shitload more heat it doesn´t do much for fps.

Now it is all fine and well if you want to run an i7 with HT (great if you do loads of video editing and stuff) but do not advice people that it is the better option for a game like CoD because that is just total (potentially costly) bs to justify your own investment.

If you want to spend $1000 on a processor alone which isn´t even properly utilized then be my guest but I´d rather spend $250 if the performance gain isn´t totally worth it.