Hyperthreading P4 vs P4 Dual Core

[IT is me]

I am sorry if this topic has been posted before, but i wanted to do a comparison between these processors. I just recently ordered a Dell XPS 400 PC with the Pentium 4 D 840 processor (3.20 GHz). I know what the difference between a Hyperthreading chip and a dual chip is, but i wanted to know which is better performing.

I also wanted to know if the Pentium D works with 64 bit software, and if so, does it emulate a 32 bit processor for 32 bit applications (which i heard can cause some lag) or not....

Thank you in advanced.

System Specs:

XPS 400 Pentium® D Processor 840 with Dual Core Technology (3.20GHz, 800FSB)

Memory 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 4DIMMs

Monitors 20 inch UltraSharp? 2005FPW Widescreen Digital Flat Panel

Video Cards 256MB PCI Express? x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X600 SE HyperMemory X600SE

Hard Drives 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache?

Floppy Drive and Media Reader 13 in 1 Media Card Reader and 3.5 in Floppy Drive

Operating System Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center 2005 Edition

Network Interface Integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet

CD or DVD Drive Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/dbl layer write capabilityDV16DVR

Sound Sound Blaster® X-Fi? XtremeMusic (D), w/Dolby® Digital 5.1 XFI

Speakers Dell 5650 5.1 100 Watt Surround Sound Speaker System with Subwoofer

 

[Xonoahbin]

Pentium D is quite better for multiple applications. Btw bro, how much did you pay for that thing? Must be about $2000.

 

[Zensal]

Hyperthreading would just take your 3.2 GHz processor and make essentially 2x1.6 GHz processors. Dual core would have 2x3.2GHz processors. Dual core is the way to go.

 

[AkumaX]

Dual core is tons better than single core + HT

IF you're using the right applications

and your 840D is 64-bit enabled, but you'd need a 64-bit OS, application and drivers

 

[jiffylube1024]

Yikes. Chalk another one up to the marketing department. Top Intel dual core, 4GB of DDR2 from Dell but only a 160GB hard drive (with a "data burst cache".. sounds fancy ) and an X600SE!

The dual core is faster for multi tasking, but ugh..... Your money is invested in needlessly expensive parts and the system won't game worth a damn either! At least you got a nice monitor out of it ^_^ . For price/performance you get a :thumbsdown: . Dell must love you though .

Originally posted by: Zensal
Hyperthreading would just take your 3.2 GHz processor and make essentially 2x1.6 GHz processors. Dual core would have 2x3.2GHz processors. Dual core is the way to go.

That's not how hyperthreading works at all. It doesn't cut your CPU in half. HT just allows you to run more than one thread at once. For multitasking, it would be like two slower cores (essentially) but for single threaded applications (which is 99% of the stuff out there), a 3.6 Ghz single core > 3.2 Ghz dual core.

I'd go for the dual core for the multitasking benefit, though.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Whoops!

 

[IntelUser2000]

In Pentium 4's case, Hyperthreading allows good single thread performance while increase multi-threading performance, without increasing transistor buget, die size, and power consumption so much like dual core does, and no sacrifice to clock speed.

 

[phaxmohdem]

Tip: (If you ever buy Dell again)

Get the MIN. RAM in your system and order it seperately from a place like Newegg. Save big $$$ and upgrade something else.

 

[Cooler]

DC>HT.

 

[carlosd]

DC>>>>>>>HT
HT is a joke!

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: Zensal
Hyperthreading would just take your 3.2 GHz processor and make essentially 2x1.6 GHz processors. Dual core would have 2x3.2GHz processors. Dual core is the way to go.

Uh no. Go read up on what HT does. Although dual core > HT.

 

[gwag]

Hyperthreading is dead now killed by dual cores, and it looks like dual core P4's with hyperthreading enabled (extreme edition) are slower than regular Pentium Ds in losts of things showing how useless it has become.

 

[stevty2889]

At the same speed, a dual core will be about 60-70% faster than a hyperthreaded P4, assuming the programs you are running are SMP aware. For programs that aren't SMP aware, the performance will be the same. Running multiple CPU intensive tasks will be a lot smoother on the dual core.

If you mostly run programs that are not SMP aware and don't do a lot of CPU intensive multi-tasking, a 3.4ghz or higher single core with HT would be better than a 3.2 dual core.

 

[carlosd]

If don't do a lot of intensive multitasking any actual single core will be OK (preferable A64 or opteron single core), otherwise you should get a dual core CPU preferable AMD.

 

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: carlosd
DC>>>>>>>HT
HT is a joke!

Before dual cores, hyperthreading rocked!

 

[carlosd]

Originally posted by: TuxDave

Originally posted by: carlosd
DC>>>>>>>HT
HT is a joke!

Before dual cores, hyperthreading rocked!

I used to work in dual opterons config before Dual core CPUs, and HT was a big Joke!

 

[IntelUser2000]

I used to work in dual opterons config before Dual core CPUs, and HT was a big Joke!

Oh, right, for PC apps there was barely any apps that had loss in performance due to HT the time HT was introduced, and it was the main reason Intel had unmistakable lead in audio/video encoding and stuff.

HT takes LESS than 5% of die size.

Dual core takes nearly twice the die size.


HT enabled CPUs only cost 5% more than non-enabled ones. HT enabled CPUs didn't take single thread performance hit.

 

[dmens]

OK how is P4 SMT a joke? I've been hearing this for ages now and would like some definitive answers.

 

[carlosd]

Originally posted by: IntelUser2000

I used to work in dual opterons config before Dual core CPUs, and HT was a big Joke!

Oh, right, for PC apps there was barely any apps that had loss in performance due to HT the time HT was introduced, and it was the main reason Intel had unmistakable lead in audio/video encoding and stuff.

HT takes LESS than 5% of die size.

Dual core takes nearly twice the die size.


HT enabled CPUs only cost 5% more than non-enabled ones. HT enabled CPUs didn't take single thread performance hit.

SMT apps performance with dual core is nearly twice than with HT!

 

[carlosd]

Originally posted by: dmens
OK how is P4 SMT a joke? I've been hearing this for ages now and would like some definitive answers.

HT is a kind of tweak to try to add performance of some kind to a long pipelined unefficent architecture like netburst, in really hard multitasking I use to do HT is just useless and most of the time I just got lower in performance in some tasks, HT fault.

 

[dmens]

Got numbers to back that up? IBM did SMT in machines with shorter pipelines than P4 and they also got performance gains, just like P4.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Originally posted by: IntelUser2000

I used to work in dual opterons config before Dual core CPUs, and HT was a big Joke!

HT enabled CPUs only cost 5% more than non-enabled ones. HT enabled CPUs didn't take single thread performance hit.

Lol, I wouldn't call a $500 increase from P-D 840 to P-D 840 EE just 5%

 

[carlosd]

Originally posted by: dmens
Got numbers to back that up? IBM did SMT in machines with shorter pipelines than P4 and they also got performance gains, just like P4.

No they didn't got significative performance gains using single cores. The SMT implementation of IBM is quite different to HT. The SMT ability of Power G5 GPU requires multiple cores to be effective because using only one core the multiples thread will get in conflict considering that it is not a long pipelined CPU mainly because the decoding stages are small and the software plays a more important role in the IBM architecture. The same aproach won't be effective in short pipelined X86 ISA CPU because all of the decoding is made by hardware.

read

 

[secretanchitman]

i thought HT was useful in running multithreaded apps...and it definitely helped me get a higher OC (242 w/o HT to 250 w/ HT).

but yes, i totally agree, dual core pwns HT now. even with the "sucky" pentium Ds, its still better than HT.

 

[dmens]

Numbers?

I fail to see the relevance of the G5 discussion. The G5 approach would be effective on a P4, because P4 does something extremely similar in hardware, starvation detect in hardware -> frontend stall (among other things). And it works. Also, the anti-starvation mechanism is programmer controllable, not hardcoded. On top of that, the article incorrectly states that P4 SMT partitioning is fixed, because it is not.

By the way, certain resources in both the front and backend related to architectural state need to be either partitioned or replicated. If G5 does not replicate anything in the backend, then they duplicated it... which is of course a more expensive solution, but does it make it a cleaner implementation? Not really.

Finally, dual core and SMT are not mutually exclusive, both can be implemented. So what's the argument?