P4 with Hyperthreading

[jononset]

So whats the deal with it. I know its going to be implemented in P4's with 3Ghz and greater. There's going to a new chipset for it right? How long before you can buy one with a motherboard that supports it?

 

[Belsebubben]

Intel Pe and Ge chipset motherboards should be avilable

 

[chuck232]

Yup 845PE anf 845GE have support. They're available right now.

...And all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put my computer back together again...

 

[pvsurfer]

The following chipsets support Intel's enhanced HT: 850E, 845E, 845G, 845PE, 845GE and 7205 (Granite Bay). The first 5 are available in motherboards now; the 7205 will be released this November. Current boards with the above chipsets may require an updated BIOS to enable it, but I'm sure they will be made available.

As you know, you need an HT enabled processor (i.e., P4 3.06 and higher). The 3.06 will be released this November.

And finally, you need to use either WinNT, Win2K or WinXP (Win9x/Me won't cut it)!

<b>God bless the <font color=red>U</font color=red><font color=white>S</font color=white><font color=blue>A</font color=blue></b>

 

[Dark_Archonis]

Actually, ONLY windows xp supports hyperthreading. It's the only microsoft OS which supports it. No other Windows version has support for hyperthreading. Not sure about other OS's though.

- - -
<font color=green>All good things must come to an end … so they can be replaced by better things! </font color=green>

 

[IntelConvert]

You are correct, although I can see why pvsurfer thought that WinNT/2K also supports HT - as they do support multi-processing/threading.

The following is 'from the mouth' of Intel:

"Intel recommends enabling HT Technology on systems with Microsoft Windows XP Home, Windows XP Professional, or Linux kernel version 2.4.18 installed, which includes Linux versions from Red Hat (Red Hat 7.3, Red Hat AS 2.1, or higher) or SuSe (SuSe 8.0 or higher). These operating systems support and have optimizations for Hyper-Threading Technology.

Intel recommends disabling HT Technology via the BIOS switch with any other legacy OS such as Microsoft Windows 98/ME/NT4.0/2000, OS/2, or any other OS not designed to take advantage of Hyper-Threading Technology."

 

[imgod2u]

While it's true that only WinXP will recognize a hyperthreaded processor, the other OS's such as WinNT and Win2k will actually see 2 processors. They just won't be able to tell the difference between 2 physical processors or 2 logical processors. Thereby, any tricks that Intel may have come up with on a software level to take special advantage of SMT will not work in those systems, however, those OS's will still see 2 processors and assign threads of instructions to each of them accordingly.
The problem is when you have two threads competing for resources, in which case performance per thread may actually decrease. Now, there have been a few rumors that this problem has been alleviated in HT v.2 which is being released with the new P4's. However, how Intel has resolved this problem is critical on whether the problem would still exist in older WinNT/Win2k OS's. If it has been resolved on a hardware level, then all of these OS's should be able to use HT to its full extent, however if the resolution is on a software level (i.e. tell the OS to put one thread over another only between logical processors), then you will need to use WinXP otherwise you will suffer the side effects of decreased performance with HT (although, to be fair, these decreases are usually within 5%).

"We are Microsoft, resistance is futile." - Bill Gates, 2015.

 

[Lemurian]

Is HT going to be a BIOS upgrade for the boards that can support it or does it require a new board purchase???

 

[imgod2u]

The following chipsets will require a bios update to support HT:
i845e
i850e
The following chipsets do not support HT:
i845g
any chipset before that
All newer chipsets since the i845e will support HT stock.

"We are Microsoft, resistance is futile." - Bill Gates, 2015.

 

[juin]

only I845G (b) stepping support HT

Now what to do??

 

[imgod2u]

The i845ge supports HT, none of the i845g's support it to my knowledge.

"We are Microsoft, resistance is futile." - Bill Gates, 2015.

 

[Atolsammeek]

Can you send me the url to this info?