any hyper threading equivalent for the athlons???

[Unicron]

I fear this will effectively give amd a kick in the balls when it comes to their processor line. The benches at tom's hardware show the 3.06 ghz P4 w/HT enabled does about as good as the p4 3.6 GHZ w/o HT.

[Ninjaa]

Yes, but how many programs actually support dual processors? Not many. I see it becoming a BIG thing in a few years, but right now it's next to worthless in real world performance.

I think that the only ways I would use it would be for like Photoshop, Autocad, or maybe some 3D rendering program.

[Unicron]

but still the more of a step up they have the further down the ladder amd is... but then again without healthy competition no one gets better at what they do. good old capitalism.

[Gamer1]

i thought the tom's hardware 3.6 (w/o HT) is just an overclocked p4...

I'm not really worried about it... as of right now i don't need it... (except maybe when playing doom 3... )

AMD will (hopefully) do a comeback... and maybe even try HT themselves... If that did happen... super athlon... if the regular isn't more powerful than the intel procs... the new and better athlons is a swift kick in the balls for intel...

but that would never happen...

But now... since HT... you see intel saying that MHz doesn't matter anymore... (i hate hypocrytes). i really think that amd quantispeed architecture is on par with HT (as of right now)

[Unicron]

yeah well let it be said again that naming system aside the athlon at the same clock speed as a p4 will always kick intel a$$

[Demigod]

Originally posted by Ninja
Yes, but how many programs actually support dual processors? Not many. I see it becoming a BIG thing in a few years, but right now it's next to worthless in real world performance.

I think that's being a bit too general. Hyper-threading has more benefits than you might think. Although it won't do much good for running a single program it has huge benefits when multi-tasking as Dr. Thomas Pabst already mentioned in the review @ Tom's Hardware Guide. When you think about it HT has some very useful applications for just about anybody. I mean honestly, who runs only one program at a time? Most people run multiple programs at once. The OS itself has multiple threads running in the background. With HT you can actually enjoy true multi-tasking (the kind you could previously only enjoy on a dual-CPU system) and get more performance out of the computer. Measuring performance isn't strictly limited to measuring how many frames you get in a single game.

Originally posted by Unicron
yeah well let it be said again that naming system aside the athlon at the same clock speed as a p4 will always kick intel a$$

And you'd be wrong. When using heavy SSE2 optimizations the Pentium 4 can match and sometimes even surpass the Athlon at the same clock speed.

Originally posted by Gamer1
i thought the tom's hardware 3.6 (w/o HT) is just an overclocked p4...

But now... since HT... you see intel saying that MHz doesn't matter anymore... (i hate hypocrytes). i really think that amd quantispeed architecture is on par with HT (as of right now)

They disabled HT in the BIOS. It wasn't an overclocked P4.

Actually Intel still goes by the Mhz system. I don't know where you'd get the idea that they've backed out of the Mhz nomenclature that's worked so well for them. The Pentium 4 was designed for speed and they stick by it. HT was just an extra feature of the Pentium 4 that was only recently enabled.

[Ninjaa]

Ah yes, I had forgotten about multitasking. Of course it would help you listen to music and browse the internet at the same time.

[Gamer1]

I got that idea because, here... intel fans (where else would you find intel fans, other that here in oregon, portland area, where intel fabs are everywhere and provides the city's economy, not portland... but Metro Portland like towns like Beaverton, Hillsboro, Aloha, etc.) are preaching that the new proc is the processor that will take away the Mhz rating....

Gee... haven't they ever heard of a Macintosh, and AMD... Stupid people... blinded by Intels marketing...

[Demigod]

I don't really see HT as a significant divergence from Intel's marketing strategy. Intel has always supported instruction parallelism in one form or another (MMX, SSE, SSE2 are all such examples). HT is also nothing new, as it has been in use in the Pentium 4 XEONs for quite a while now. Most people know nothing but Mhz numbers and Intel will keep at it.

Heh, even though the Mac PowerPC performs faster than an Intel counterpart it still gets no respect (except for those Macintosh fanatics of course).

[Gamer1]

The thing is... they (people here in my town) only know HT because intel has the HT thing on their new p4 logo.

HT has been around for a very long time... its just recently that intel had good performance out of it. and decided to enable it on their newer proc line.

[Ultragunner]

if... amd incorporated HTT and SSE2 on their next processor lines, they will rule.

[Demigod]

The AMD Hammer will have SSE2 support. AMD will officially license the technology in Q1 of 2003. This means they could also put it on the Barton, although I doubt they will.