Does SMP still hurt games?

[GreatDaleness]

All the benchmarks I've seen on SMP in the past have shown that even though it has twice the processor power, it is usually SLOWER when running games. With hyperthreading commonplace now as well as DX9, I was wondering if this is still the case.

 

[GreatDaleness]

bump

 

[1966]

Hyperthreading & SMP are 2 different things.

Hyperthreading doesnt hurt games it helps it.

 

[GoSharks]

hyperthreading and SMP are pretty closely related.

anyways - smp never really hurt you much. maybe a couple small percentage points (running SMP right now) same goes for hyperthreading - check anand's benches

 

[wetcat007]

Originally posted by: 1966
Hyperthreading & SMP are 2 different things.

Hyperthreading doesnt hurt games it helps it.

Never seen it help, it generally takes away very minimally.

 

[aka1nas]

Most games do not take advantage of multihtreading so SMP and HT actually incurr the penalty for their respective overheads but don't really add much of a performance advantage.

 

[GnomeCop]

The only reason SMP system "hurt" games is because the SMP capable cpus were usually slower and had older chipsets and in turn slower fsb.

 

[aka1nas]

Also they usually use registrered and/or ECC RAM which usually has higher latency than unbuffered RAM.