Playing on Hyperthreading technology
Playing on Hyperthreading technology
I don't grasp hyper-threading well, but I've been considering it as one core handling two tasks at once, making it seem like two are available. I'm curious about its impact on gaming performance in a game that only needs four cores. If an i7 with hyper-threading uses four of the eight cores, would it be more efficient to skip using it? That's just my thought—I'd appreciate any feedback if I'm misunderstanding.
Linus created a clip discussing this topic. Generally, most games don't rely on hyperthreading, which is why an i5 delivers performance close to an i7.
Hyperthreading influences gaming speed. That’s why Intel Core i3 chips are similar to Core i5 in some titles. Shifting from i5 to i7/Xeon brings limited gains because modern games usually don’t fully use more than four cores or threads.
I used to believe HT was completely useless in games. but with a dual-core processor, I think it really makes a difference. since many games actually support multiple cores, having more can help. anything beyond that seems unlikely to add value. i noticed a noticeable boost in performance—around 1 extra FPS—in Arma 3 when HT was off on my 4770k.
DX 12 hasn't arrived yet, so the I5 is actually running on two cores just like the I3. Both have the same clock speed.
With a four-core processor lacking hyperthreading, one core is responsible for handling the operating system and background tasks, meaning you won’t have all four cores working simultaneously. This setup allows the remaining virtual cores to manage the OS and most operations efficiently, giving you an additional core advantage in practice.
Hyper-threading is employed in games, but typically only a few threads are utilized.