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Subject says it all. I'll definately be going with an Intel/Rambus config (more costly, but what the hell, eh?). I am waiting for the P4 3.0GHz, and will either wait for 2.8GHz's to go down in price, or get the 3.0GHz itself. The main deciding factor for this will be support for Hyperthreading, which will be the P4 3.0GHz's only major advantage over buying a less costly 2.8. Anyway, your thoughts?
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System Specs:
Gigabyte 8INXP - Pentium 4 2.8@3.4 - 1GB Corsair 3200 XMS - Enermax 550W PSU - 2 80GB WDs 8MB cache in RAID 0 array - 36GB Seagate 15.3K SCSI boot drive - ATI AIW 9700 - M-Audio Revolution - 16x Pioneer DVD slot load - Lite-On 48x24x48x CD-RW - Logitech MX700 - Koolance PC2-601BW case - Cambridge MegaWorks 550s - Mitsubishi 2070SB 22" CRT
Our Father, who 0wnz heaven, j00 r0ck!
May all 0ur base someday be belong to you!
Give us this day our warez, mp3z, and pr0n through a phat pipe.
And cut us some slack when we act like n00b lamerz,
just as we teach n00bz when they act lame on us.
For j00 0wn r00t on all our b0x3s 4ever and ever, 4m3n. -
P4's aren't all that great at Hyperthreading (ick, multi-threading, call it what it is). From what I've heard (usually highly reliable), the P4 was always supposed to have multi-threading, but it was too broken at P4 launch time. Once they got it turned on in a later stepping, they were kind of depressed at the performance.
Maybe it will improve things a bit more in later processors, once there's plenty of cache, and lots of spare registers.Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP. -
I was under the impression that existing P4's, even the 2.8, didn't have it enabled. Am I wrong about this?System Specs:
Gigabyte 8INXP - Pentium 4 2.8@3.4 - 1GB Corsair 3200 XMS - Enermax 550W PSU - 2 80GB WDs 8MB cache in RAID 0 array - 36GB Seagate 15.3K SCSI boot drive - ATI AIW 9700 - M-Audio Revolution - 16x Pioneer DVD slot load - Lite-On 48x24x48x CD-RW - Logitech MX700 - Koolance PC2-601BW case - Cambridge MegaWorks 550s - Mitsubishi 2070SB 22" CRT
Our Father, who 0wnz heaven, j00 r0ck!
May all 0ur base someday be belong to you!
Give us this day our warez, mp3z, and pr0n through a phat pipe.
And cut us some slack when we act like n00b lamerz,
just as we teach n00bz when they act lame on us.
For j00 0wn r00t on all our b0x3s 4ever and ever, 4m3n.Comment
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Xeons have had it for a while, AFAIK. They're P4s.Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.Comment
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Well, let's say the 3.0GHz, when it's out, costs $500, and the 2.8 goes to $400. Would you think the 3.0GHz with Hyperthreading would be worth the extra cost?System Specs:
Gigabyte 8INXP - Pentium 4 2.8@3.4 - 1GB Corsair 3200 XMS - Enermax 550W PSU - 2 80GB WDs 8MB cache in RAID 0 array - 36GB Seagate 15.3K SCSI boot drive - ATI AIW 9700 - M-Audio Revolution - 16x Pioneer DVD slot load - Lite-On 48x24x48x CD-RW - Logitech MX700 - Koolance PC2-601BW case - Cambridge MegaWorks 550s - Mitsubishi 2070SB 22" CRT
Our Father, who 0wnz heaven, j00 r0ck!
May all 0ur base someday be belong to you!
Give us this day our warez, mp3z, and pr0n through a phat pipe.
And cut us some slack when we act like n00b lamerz,
just as we teach n00bz when they act lame on us.
For j00 0wn r00t on all our b0x3s 4ever and ever, 4m3n.Comment
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Probably not. Last time I looked at the benches only certain apps benefitted from HT, and some are slowed down. I doubt you're running Oracle at home, so it's of debatable usefulness to you.Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.Comment
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Hyperthreading... it should help Intel to catch AMD up at the same MHz clock.
By the way, Hyperthreading does offer great performance boast wih Hyperthreading-aware applications - speaking of Xeon, don't know about regular P4...P4 Northwood 1.8GHz@2.7GHz 1.65V Albatron PX845PEV Pro
Running two Dell 2005FPW 20" Widescreen LCD
And of course, Matrox Parhelia | My Matrox histroy: Mill-I, Mill-II, Mystique, G400, ParheliaComment
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"Hyperthreading-aware" doesn't really cover it. It's not like you can take any application, optimize it for that style of multi-threading, and have it work better. The majority of algorithms out there just don't benefit from it.Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.Comment
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Photoshop is supposed to benefit from it (approx. 20% performance increase); Adobe is also working on (if it hasn't already happened) Premier to make it hyperthreading-aware.
Buddman: Why go P4 instead of Xeon ? Any reason why you are not waiting for the Granite/Placer chipset (Xeon + DDR SDRAM, USB2, PCI-X, ...) ?
JörgComment
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Maybe because he doesnt showel money around?
Comment
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Well, he said "more costly, but what the hell"...
JörgComment
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I'm a little confused here - what is a "hyperthreading-aware" application? Is it just a multi-threaded program, or is there a difference?Originally posted by WyWyWyWy
By the way, Hyperthreading does offer great performance boast wih Hyperthreading-aware applications...Blah blah blah nick blah blah confusion, blah blah blah blah frog.Comment
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I think there is a difference. If a problem is simply multithreaded, but performs the same operations in both threads, it will not really benefit from hyperthreading (the CPU can't do every operation in parallel.
However, if one thread uses different instructions than the other, these might be "interleaved" (so to speak) with the other thread, resulting in a performance gain.
Suppose the CPU can do A and B in parallel. A multithreaded application that looks like this:
thread1: AAAAAAA
thread2: AAAAAAA
will benefit from a dual CPU, but not from hyperthreading. If the threads were to look like
thread1: AAAAAAA
thread2: BBBBBBB
it can be run in parallel on a hyperthreaded processor.
(very simplistic explanation)
I think hyperthreading aware software takes this into account, and has seperate threads that can run in parallel on a hyperthreaded CPU.
JörgComment
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THat might be possible, but tbh I dont think so many software out there is "hyper-threading" aware. I mean, they tested a whole slew of software which showed improvements with HT enabled, I dont think that so many developers are putting in the support, especially taking in consideration that not so many home users can affors Xeons which are still the only HT-supporting CPUs.
I am not an expert on this, but I think that multi-threading apps can benefit from HT too.Comment
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Well, yes. The above examples were just simple extreme cases to illustrate the working. Most multithreaded programs will have something like
thread1: AABABBAAA
thread2: ABBBABAAB
in which case parts can be executed in parallel, which result in a performance increase.
JörgComment
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