Turn Intel hyperthreading off in the BIOS?

[RexRed]

Turn Intel hyperthreading off in the BIOS?

When single core performance sets your song limitation, having a complete core dedicated the highest workload of your project is a benefit (in my opinion).

You will not get double the performance by turning hyperthreading off, but you will get more stability and quite possibly more performance out of that single core (in my opinion).

Any thoughts?

Edited Monday at 09:24 PM by RexRed

[Xoo]

On.

[RexRed]

1 hour ago, Xoo said:

On.

Intel says you get higher single core performance with it off and they have discontinued making power cores with hyperthreading in their new chips.

Also, for gaming stats, more games benefit with it off than on.

Cakewalk treats the second thread as a separate core and does not combined the power of the second thread.

So does this second thread actually limit and slow down the core? Intel says, "Yes".

With all of the years that hyperthreading has been around one would think that games would have been optimized to use double the threads, but that is not the case, most games LOSE performance with it on.

I believe Cakewalk also loses single core performance (and stability) with it on.

Edited Monday at 09:24 PM by RexRed

[RexRed]

Comment:

Cinebench did give me a slightly higher benchmark rendering with my CPU with hyperthreading on but, I render my 3D graphics with my GPU not my CPU.

If Cakewalk sees each thread as a separate core, I do not see how we will get better single core performance with it on.

Cakewalk also sees my efficiency cores as cores too. It has no real shortage of processing units even with hyperthreading off.

It is logical to concur with Intel in thinking that single core performance will get a boost with HT off.

Edited Monday at 09:37 PM by RexRed

[Glenn Stanton]

depends on the load. FX are generally processor intensive and calculating the delays and reverberation layers can get complex really fast. so for those tasks - intensive complex calculations vs reduced instructions on many more cores (GPU), probably there are some architecture choices in the DAW software. 

Intel probably is turning off the HT in "power cores" as they likely already have the parallel processing chains built in, or they simply want people to spend more money on larger CPU devices with more cores... 🙂 or they're going to introduce some radical RISC set chips to take on Apple... 😉 

[RexRed]

2 hours ago, Glenn Stanton said:

depends on the load. FX are generally processor intensive and calculating the delays and reverberation layers can get complex really fast. so for those tasks - intensive complex calculations vs reduced instructions on many more cores (GPU), probably there are some architecture choices in the DAW software. 

Intel probably is turning off the HT in "power cores" as they likely already have the parallel processing chains built in, or they simply want people to spend more money on larger CPU devices with more cores... 🙂 or they're going to introduce some radical RISC set chips to take on Apple... 😉 

Intel may be dropping hyperthreading from its CPUs to improve power efficiency and performance in portable laptops:
•    Power efficiency
Hyperthreading can increase power consumption and take up valuable space on the CPU die. Intel wants to make its laptops thinner, lighter, and longer-lasting, so it can't afford the power cost of hyperthreading.
•    Performance
Hyperthreading can be detrimental to performance in some situations, especially when there are more cores on the CPU. For example, Intel's Lunar Lake CPUs have 14% faster performance cores than the previous generation, even without hyperthreading.
•    Core counts
The increasing number of cores on modern CPUs can reduce the advantages of hyperthreading. For example, Intel's Arrow Lake desktop CPUs may have 20 or 24 cores without hyperthreading, which would allow for the same number of threads. 
 
PCMag
Intel Dumping Hyper-Threading in Its Next-Gen Chips? That ...
Mar 5, 2024 — For years, Hyper-Threading has stood out as a major asset to Intel, but the tec...
 
ExtremeTech
Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs Will Allegedly Ditch Hyper-Threading
Jan 22, 2024 — The slides show Intel is planning three variants of Arrow Lake for desktop: 8P...
 
PC World
Intel abandons hyperthreading for Lunar Lake CPUs | PCWorld
Jun 6, 2024 — The reason is complicated, but basically it's no longer wanted as Intel strives...
 
VideoCardz.com
Intel Core Ultra "Arrow Lake" desktop CPUs with 20 and 24 cores spotted ...
Apr 13, 2024 — No hyperthreading on board. The leak reveals at least two different models, on...
Hyperthreading can be useful for programming and software development, especially when working with multi-threaded applications. It allows for the concurrent execution of multiple threads, which can speed up the execution of parallelizable tasks. 
For years, Hyper-Threading has stood out as a major asset to Intel, but the technology has its trade-offs. Supporting Hyper-Threading has a small but noticeable increase in power consumption, and it also consumes valuable space on the CPU die.Mar 5, 2024

Is Cakewalk multithreaded?
Yes, Cakewalk by BandLab has a plug-in load balancing feature that uses multiple cores on a multi-core PC to process plug-in buffers in parallel. This feature can help balance DSP workloads and reduce CPU spikes, which can lead to audio dropouts and inefficient load balancing. However, plug-ins must be multi-processing compliant for this feature to work.

[RexRed]

Vastly differing opinions:

1: Just disabling HT will not increase single thread performance. What it WILL do is decrease temps so you can OC higher, which in turn will increase performance.

or

2: Yes, disabling HT will give a small boost to single threaded performance. The cores are no longer divided and sharing work, so the one thread going to each core gets the complete attention of that core, so the single thread performance will slightly improve.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/can-disabling-hyperthreading-increase-single-core-performance.225564/

I like the logic of the second opinion, how much of a performance boost with less power consumption is debatable.

A core working on one single task should perform better than two unrelated tasks.

If the hyperthreaded core has less die space, has the damage already been done?

And less heat on the core can prevent throttling in heavy loads.

I am leaving HT off for a while because also there are mysterious heat issues with the 13900K chips as it is.

Motherboard voltage spikes etc.

Edited Tuesday at 02:32 AM by RexRed

[Starship Krupa]

The thing to do is try it and see.

I'm not into "theoretical" performance tuning.

IME, leaving hyperthreading on is the way to go. On my lower-end systems, I've had projects that wouldn't even play back once I disabled hyperthreading.

We all have different ways to challenge CPU's. For some it's multiple soft synths, for others, a multitude of mixing FX, and for plenty more, both.

Try it on your most complex projects and observe the difference.

[Bill Phillips]

On 6/24/2024 at 7:54 PM, Glenn Stanton said:

 they're going to introduce some radical RISC set chips to take on Apple... 😉 

That seems like a circle. I was a big DEC alpha fan. Even after Intel et al drove DEC out of business, I recall Compaq selling alphas for high end processor intensive applications for years after the last version became available. Seem to recall there was a single-bit alpha version that was really quick. Maybe computing would be better off today if DEC had survived.🤭