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  1. #1
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    What games benefit from Hyper Threading?

    Hey all!

    Simple question. What games benefit from Hyper Threading? Been in a discussion about this, where the other guy called me stupid, and claimed i5 2500k is a bad choice for gaming (lolwtf?) and would bottle neck a GTX 680 badly. Can I go destroy him verbally, or did i actually miss something here?

    Regards, Ninth

  2. #2
    http://www.thegeeklynews.com/2011/07...-intel-i7-cpu/ Should answer your question.

    Short answer: none that I know of. And even if they do exist, there's not enough of them out there to warrant the extra $100 (at least). The guy you're discussing this with is likely one of those people who thinks that, because the number is higher and it costs more, an i7 must be better! There are a lot of people out there who think that way.
    Last edited by noteworthynerd; 2012-04-19 at 01:34 PM.

  3. #3
    I don't know any games that benefit from HT. Maybe there are some but very few so not significant.

    You should not seriously have an argument with someone who says i5-2500k is bad for gaming.

  4. #4
    Stood in the Fire Linaver's Avatar
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    Hyper Threading? Virtually none.

  5. #5
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    I think when BF3 launched it performed synthetically better with HT on but it introduced stuttering to the point of it being very annoying.

    IIRC Civ 5 does benefit some from hyper threading.

  6. #6
    Civilization 5 is well multithreaded and benefits from it slightly.

    Another type of games that benefits from HT is computer chess and similar games (Go for example) that are properly multithreaded and will count millions of moves ahead. Civ5 probably does the same which is why it benefits from extra cores and I guess you could generalize it to covering anything that has fully multithreaded AI.

    Besides the cases mentioned above, HT does not benefit any games.
    Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
    Trolling should be.

  7. #7
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    Thanks all for the quick replies! Like i thought then. Pointless discussion, yes, but some people simply make you mad

  8. #8
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    2600 (or more) is higher than 2500! It must be better! Right...

  9. #9
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    Not for general destop usage and gaming.

    the only real noticable difference is in benchmarks and encoding yet the 2600k will be much more expensive... a 2500k should overclock higher too...

  10. #10
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    Doesn't WoW support multithreading as well? Or am I totally missing what multithreading is? I know WoW can use more than 1 core.

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yakobo15 View Post
    2600 (or more) is higher than 2500! It must be better! Right...
    I know no i5 that's over 3,5. i7's are, so I suppose that would equals to being better.
    I suppose for someone that's got the know-how on overclocking, an i5 is a better choice if it has good potential, something I don't know.

  12. #12
    WoW supports multiple threads, but last time I checked it puts most of the stuff on two, and a little bit on the third, so an extra 4 virtual cores won't do much for you.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noomz View Post
    I know no i5 that's over 3,5. i7's are, so I suppose that would equals to being better.
    I suppose for someone that's got the know-how on overclocking, an i5 is a better choice if it has good potential, something I don't know.
    Even at stock speeds, the difference is negligible, as evidenced by the multitude of benchmarks you can find comparing the two.

  13. #13
    I use an i5 2500k in my new build, runs WoW and MW3 amazing.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by nzall View Post
    Doesn't WoW support multithreading as well? Or am I totally missing what multithreading is? I know WoW can use more than 1 core.
    Yes it does.

    The following is not 100% accurate, but illustrates the idea, and applies to both real and HT cores

    The big thing is that in WoW as well as most other games there's one thread that can't be subdivided further, and that's the thread responsible for drawing stuff on screen. The CPU time of that one thread always is the limiting factor of how much you can split the rest of the game elsewhere. Assuming you want 60fps speed in a game you need to make sure the processor can run the main thread completely from start to finish 60 times every second. If you want to run other things on other core/thread at the same time, let's say sound or network code, you need to make sure those run faster than the graphics (at least 60 times/second) and don't care if they finish lot earlier than the graphics thread. WoW and 99% of all current games are built this way, and are limited by the big thread running screen refresh.

    The main reason why compared to dumb first person shooter like BF3 WoW requires significantly more processor time in the screen refresh simply because there are more visible players on screen, and each player takes x amount of time to process in the draw phase. First person shooters are often limited to 4v4 or 8v8 or 16v16 players for that exact reason: limit CPU usage to maximize framerate for best possible twitch reactiveness.

    Something like chess is different because you can subdivide the computer moves almost infinitely at every branch. As you move one chess piece, it creates whole new 'subgame' that can be solved recursively until the very last piece. This type of game can be divided to infinite number of cores because every subgame can be assigned to a new core and a game that starts five moves from now does not need to be finished calculating until player has made at least five moves so there's no hard limit to wait for screen refresh timer.
    Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
    Trolling should be.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Noomz View Post
    I know no i5 that's over 3,5. i7's are, so I suppose that would equals to being better.
    I suppose for someone that's got the know-how on overclocking, an i5 is a better choice if it has good potential, something I don't know.
    With most of the motherboards supporting some sort of one-click overclocking, it really ain't rocket science.
    And really, if you're clueless, Google.com pretty much guides you through everything you need to know.

    As Noteworthynerd said, there is virtually no difference at stock speeds between the 2500k and 2600k, and even if there was a tiny ammount of performance gain, would it justify spending another 100$?

  16. #16
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    Supreme Commander 2 does (if I remember correctly) benefit from HT.

  17. #17
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    I had the same thing as you, i couldnt decide between the i7 2600k and i5 2500k, but after some research (found out that no game at the moment supports HT) i noticed that the difference between the i5 and i7 for gaming is minimal, so i picked the i5 (100$ cheaper) and used the money i've saved to buy a better GPU, wich was the ati 7970.
    eventually i gave the i5 a big boost, it's running at 4.5ghz at the moment, no problems so far.

    from what i've heard and read HP would be better if you use alot of photo/video editing.

  18. #18
    General rule has always been that games themselves don't benefit from HT. Anything running behind or in conjunction with the game potentially will make use of the HT. Does that result in faster gamespeeds? No. For the highest benching almost everyone disables HT entirely to spare the unnecessary heat. More commonly, people just don't OC their processors to the point where disabling HT is a relevant practice, and run their games without thinking about it since whether you have an i5-2500k or an i7-2600k and HT, either processor is well beyond the minimum threshold of gaming currently, barring very poor port-jobs like GTAIV, which after modding wouldn't run nicely regardless of what processor was installed. Fairly simple.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Marest View Post
    Supreme Commander 2 does (if I remember correctly) benefit from HT.
    Same goes for SC1 (and boy did it help, a lot). I can't think of any others outside of that series that do.

    I personally went with the i7, just because I can.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by vesseblah View Post
    Yes it does.

    The following is not 100% accurate, but illustrates the idea, and applies to both real and HT cores

    The big thing is that in WoW as well as most other games there's one thread that can't be subdivided further, and that's the thread responsible for drawing stuff on screen. The CPU time of that one thread always is the limiting factor of how much you can split the rest of the game elsewhere. Assuming you want 60fps speed in a game you need to make sure the processor can run the main thread completely from start to finish 60 times every second. If you want to run other things on other core/thread at the same time, let's say sound or network code, you need to make sure those run faster than the graphics (at least 60 times/second) and don't care if they finish lot earlier than the graphics thread. WoW and 99% of all current games are built this way, and are limited by the big thread running screen refresh.

    The main reason why compared to dumb first person shooter like BF3 WoW requires significantly more processor time in the screen refresh simply because there are more visible players on screen, and each player takes x amount of time to process in the draw phase. First person shooters are often limited to 4v4 or 8v8 or 16v16 players for that exact reason: limit CPU usage to maximize framerate for best possible twitch reactiveness.

    Something like chess is different because you can subdivide the computer moves almost infinitely at every branch. As you move one chess piece, it creates whole new 'subgame' that can be solved recursively until the very last piece. This type of game can be divided to infinite number of cores because every subgame can be assigned to a new core and a game that starts five moves from now does not need to be finished calculating until player has made at least five moves so there's no hard limit to wait for screen refresh timer.
    I'd semi agree with you on everything except FPS and TPS are not made 4v4-16v16 because of anything to do with this at all in the slightest. Many and i do mean many games are locked to smaller players simply because of the host/client situation and what the Regional average of ISP speed, now even more games are locked because of cost dedicated hosting cost's money and if your not charging a per month or w/e your game is going to cost you money inevitably. Sony has console games pushing 50+ players a map and Xbox has a few 60ish player games, give or take much less than sony and clearly a lot less than PC. Even Halo supported a max of 8v8 but we all been in 32-64 player halo maps with no detriment to the game aswell as Socom 1-3(CA). CPU limitations are not even a thought in the drop bucket that is developing when combing over 4-8-12-16-32-64-128 player games, WoW has the possibility of well over 1000 people being in a very small location now factor in a few things i.e the basics of movement aiming and world are all still in WoW, so even remotely assuming CPU limitation is in the thoughts of a FPS game developer when he is deciding what is going to be a good number for MP combat is completely and utterly wrong.

    With that being said Hyperthreading has been around for quite a while now actually and still very very few things that it benefits enough to warrant buying an i7>i5.
    In more recent reviews the Fx-8150 from AMD has been considered = to the i5-2500(K) in overall gaming performance and pulls ahead in Multithreaded applications however it is still $20-$50 more than the 2500(k) which also makes it less worth the money.

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