HyperThreading On Pentium, What about AMD?

I was just wondering if AMD had an equivlent to pentiums hyperthreading.

I have read that in order to use hyperthreading a person has to have WinXP Pro.
Do the new 64bit chips have anything that can only be used with WinXP Pro?

Just curious.



cooked

 

So is hypertransport the same as hyperthreading? Or is it differnt some how?
Is this the 64bit chips that have that?

Thanks!



cooked

 

Hypertransport does not do the same thing as Hyper-Threading. AMD just named it that to make people draw that conclusion.

It was originally named Lightning Data Transport. (LDT)

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2001may/chi20010507005762.htm

 

P.S. - Hyper-Threading is not a big deal unless you run programs that can utilize dual processors. Photo and video editing programs.

 

please tell us why (not saying you are he is wrong...just want to know why b/c you don't give a reason)

 

what is hyperthreading. Just felt like learning something today.

 

check out this article: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1576

 

thanx im getting it. so basically its like dual processors? so its efficient, and faster or something?

 

In a nutshell, it is "designed to allow a single processor to appear as two "logical" processors and make more efficient use of chip resources."

from http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Dec/gee20021218017832.htm

 

ohhh ok. so it functions like a dual processor but isn't actually one. essentially making it more efficient. dual processing is still essentially better though right?

 

well, i just read up on both, and they are very much different (read the article posted by Wyatt, then read the article I posted).

 

in cetain applications

 

like video editing?

 

yes
........

 

yes, i did something today! i learnd what hyperthreading was! woot woot

...kind of...

 

Hey thanks folks!

Im learning something new all the time here. This was on my mind for a while now.

Does hyperthreading do anything to help gaming? I know now that it works really well with photo and video editing but how about us gamers?

Reason im asking is i have already started saving for my next computer but I wont have suffecent funds for a while.

So overall, how do the 64bits compare with Pentiums with HT. I have seen numerous benchmarks with the 64s and just plane old Pentiums, but none with HT.
Thanks



cooked

 

Hey, everybody....

The new Linux utilizes the 64 bit code,
and the beta Longhorn does, also,

Right???

 

Longhorn will (afaik) utilize 64-bit hardware...not sure about linux.

 

Not sure about Longhorn. I thought that was still in alpha. It will probably be 64-bit primarily, however.

There is WinXP 64-bit Edition which is in a free beta mode, but driver support is very limited. But that's XP based, not Longhorn (aka Windows 2010) based.


For the record:
Hyperthreading is a method by which the processor treats the single physical processor as two logical ones. The processor can then essentially run two threads at the same time so that wasted clock cycles are reduced. Because of the extreme length of the P4 pipeline, this helps increase performance on applications which require large numbers of dissparate operations, mainly encoding/decoding, compressing/decompressing, and multimedia creation and editing.

For more info on Hyperthreading:
http://www.intel.com/technology/hyperthread/ (See the training materials links on the right side of this link to see some nify Flash info.)


Hypertransport is realized by moving the memory control hub (a major part of the northbridge) and the front-side bus on-die with the processor. That allows the FSB and the memory control hub to operate at the same frequency as the CPU, and allows data transport between the two to have a very high bandwidth. I believe there's also two (or three for socket 939 designs) busses coming off the CPU die, one for the system, and one for memory (two for the 939 for dual channel). The remaining functions of the northbridge are combined with those of the south bridge into a single IC. I'm not sure of the system bus speed between the CPU and the I/O control hub. Honestly, I haven't looking into Hypertransport that much. I do know that it greatly enhances performance for applications that require a lot of memory access (gaming, mainly).

I will say, however, that buying an AMD64 processor for use on a socket 754 mobo seems incredibly dumb. The primary advantage of Hypertransport is the high memory bandwidth, but the socket 754 CPUs don't support dual channel, limiting you to 3.2 GB/s. The socket 939 chips do use dual channel, giving you 6.4 GB/s.

More info on Hypertransport:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_8796_8807~24107,00.html (A very good white paper by AMD; see page 8 for a great diagram.

 

Thanks very much Chicken!

You really simplified it me. Thanks for that little info about the 64bits. When i do buld my new system ill be sure to take your advice!

Thanks again!



cooked

 

Yes. Thankyou daChicken,
for the info, and the good links!

 

I sure I made at least one error in there, so don't be afraid to go check it out for yourself. Like I'm not sure of the bandwidth of the AMD64 memory bus (but I know that dual channel is twice the size).

It's all just my understanding of the technology.

 

i think only the athlon 64 FX chip supports dual channel RAM ... from the article i read i came away with that impression

 

That used to be the case before the socket 939 was released. Prior to that happeneing, there were only socket 754 chips (AMD64's) and socket 940 chips (A64 FX, Opteron). I know that the socket 940 can support dual channel, but I'm not sure if every chip did (but I think so). Socket 754 can't support dual channel (a mistake by AMD). Check the date on your article.

And yes, AMD is very confusing at the moment (four different sockets are in production). I miss the days of the universal Socket A!

 

it was april 04 ... but it had a diagram comparing it to the P4EE and it had things messed up that i could tell were wrong ... like saying the 64FX had a FSB of 266MB and things like that ... i think they had the diagrams mislabeled ... for the most part i do like PC Upgrade magazine ... just that seemed a little rushed so i hesitate to say something decisive when they mess up like that

 

Socket 939 was released in June of this year.

As far as the FSB comment, maybe they were referring to what speed RAM the motherboard could support? DDR266 is PC2100, though, and that seems slow to me. ** shrugs **

 

i looked at the article they are talking about the 940 chipset and they did mislabel it ... they labeled the P4 diagram the 64FX and vice versa ... anyway ...