Does having more then 4 'threads' help any games?

[cythx]

I have a Intel i7 and I'm wondering if multithreading helps my gaming at all? It gives me 2 threads on each of my 4 cores.

 

[Lmeow]

Well, most games take less than three cores, so no. HyperThreading actually slows down some games, something related to the extra thread having to calculate stuff that it doesn't need to, probably an example of this is where the Core i7 loses to the Phenom II X4. Also, applications that aren't programmed to take advantage of HyperThreading, well, don't take advantage of the extra threads, and most if not all games don't take advantage of HT.

 

[randomizer]

Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Apart from that you're going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel.

 

[gamerk316]

Actually, a lot of newer games thread really well; Dragon Age uses all 4 of my QX9650's cores at 80% or so. It simply depends on how well games scale.

Hyperthreading itself will improve performance 99.9% of the time, though there are the odd cases where it will cause a performance hit.

 

[randomizer]

This topic was about using more than 4 threads though.