Who Will Benefit From Hyper-Threading?

qoncept asks: "I've read a number of reviews of Intel's new Pentium 4 3.06ghz processor with multithreading and I've noticed that perhaps it is being reviewed as an option to the wrong people, and in fact Intel may even be marketing it to the wrong people. It seems that, as a business move, Hyper-Threading may not have been worth Intel's investing in it. Most reviews show that in single threaded benchmarks, there are literally no benefits to using HT. In multithreaded processes, the results are moderate at best. Yet, of course, the reviews seem to say the feel is better. There you go -- it won't increase your productivity by compiling your Java. But, price point permitting, it may be exactly what the casual home user wants -- save money by getting, say a 3.06ghz HT CPU instead of a 3.6ghz CPU without, yet have Internet Explorer, mIRC, AIM and Word run just as 'comfortably.' The benchmarks don't say much for HT, but I'm at least slightly excited about it. What about everyone else?"

Comments

Everyone misses

[psavo]

The point in 2+ CPU systems. It's not about getting multithreaded apps gettin faster, it's about getting more programs run together better.
When using 2 cpus (or HT), when one process takes all the juice there's still some left for everything else, and system will appear more responsive.
So, there You go, You can encode some divx, and still browse comfortably net, or listen to mp3's, or watch some divx. (Of course I don't know how effective HT is, but my 2xAthlon lets me do just that).

who will benefit? intel of course

[Splork]

they've just invented a feature that their marketing department can say without lying that their chip has that others don't.

the fact that it doesn't do anything useful for most uses at the moment makes no difference.