any i5 or i3 HT on/off gaming comparisons?

[toyota]

I just want to see some game comparisons of an i5 or i3 dual core with HT on and then off. I know it makes little difference on the i7 for games but there's no doubt it helps on the dual core i series. any link would be appreciated or if you have an i3 or i5 dual core, I would love to see a couple of comparison benchmarks if possible.

 

[toyota]

you guys are useless

 

[Bman123]

Lol, I don't remember seeing anything like this

 

[toyota]

I figured somebody could at least test a few games if nothing like this exists. if you ask you me to test something, I will be back with the results in just a few minutes.

 

[podspi]

That would actually be a really interesting thing to see. I'd do the testing, but I have no i3 (though I have been tempted by a few Microcenter sales every once in a while).

 

[zlejedi]

I don't remember anyone doing it for Sandy. If you dig into Nehalem era articles you might have more luck.

 

[dbcooper1]

It's been some time ago but last I heard, gaming was one of the things HT actually hindered performance in and most shut it off for that reason.

 

[sm625]

Well you can try comparing the i3-2100 to the fastest sb pentium. Might need to adjust the numbers to match the clock frequencies. But after you do that you should have a very good idea what HT does.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-g850-g840-g620_4.html#sect0

The 2100 scores significantly better in most games. Looks like most is due to clocks though. The SC2 results are telling though. The fact that a 2100 only barely beats the pentium tells me HT is a handicap there.

There is a pentium B860 now so that should make an interesting comparison to the 2100.

 

[Blastman]

Dirt 2

i5-661 (HT on) ………….. 96.47
Q9550 (2.83) …………….. 94.51
i3-540 (3.06)…………….. 90.43
E8600 (3.3) …………..… 73.40
i5-661 (HT off) …………. 72.02
E7400 (2.8) ……………. 56.47

This review test has benches for the i5-661 with/without HT (hyperthreading). If you check that sites processor reviews, the original i3-530/540 review also has benches with HT on/off. In well threaded games like Dirt 2, one can get somewhat of an idea that HT is helping considerably by comparing against the pervious generation dual cores. The dual core i3's are generally substantially faster than the previous generation of dual cores in multithreaded games and multithreaded gaming is one of the areas (along with video encoding) where HT makes some of the biggest performance gains. An i3-540 is almost as fast as a Q9550 in Dirt 2, and substantially faster than a higher clocked E8600. It isn't going to take much of an overclock for the i3-540 to outrun the Q9550, and the i3 mops the floor with the slower dual cores under the E8600.

In this computerbase i3-2100 test, HT boosted performance 71% in the game F1 versus no HT. Surprisingly, in the same game F1, the i7-2600K loses 4% performance by enabling HT … computerbase i7-2600K. There are other games where the i7-2600 drops in performance (-5%) with HT on in that same computerbase review, like RE5, where the i3-2100 sees a 46% gain with HT on.

In BF:BC2, HT boosts performance on the i3-530 by ~ 50-60% … overclockers … scroll down about halfway in that thread for benches of the i3-530 with/without HT. HT makes a huge difference in this game. The i3-530 looks to be averaging below 40 (with several dips in the low 20's) without HT, and close to 60 with HT on with only 1 dip slightly below 40. It's the difference between unplayable and half decent frame rates for BC2.

You can also get a pretty good idea how much HT is helping in games where there is a G6950 in the review (2.8Ghz dual core Clarkdale with no HT and 3MB L3 vs 4MB for i3-530). The dual core Sandy Bridge processors like the Pentium G850 (2.9) G860 (3.0) could also be compared to the i3-2100 (3.1) if a particular review has those processors too. In this Techreport BF:BC2 test, the i3-560 (3.3Ghz) is 81% faster than the Clarkdale dual core without HT G6950 (2.8Ghz) with an only 18% clockrate advantage. The i3-560 also easily outran the Q9400 (2.66Ghz) in that BC2 benchmark.

 

[toyota]

thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for.