Intel Pentium w/ Hyper-thread.

McMonkeydo wrote on 12/11/2002, 11:28 AM

Does anyone know if there is a (video editing w/ Vegas) benifit from the new pentium 4s w/ Hyper-threading vs. just a fast standard pentium 4? It's about an $800 swing on the purchase cost of a new system but I'll only get one bite at the configuration apple.

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 12/11/2002, 11:54 AM

You need to be careful with what is mostly "marketing hype" Intel does it, AMD does it too. Best best is read several reviews on the CPU/ motherboard you are planning on using. Tom's Hardware is one site, but he's a little too opinionated on several topics and his bias comes through without much backup to support his conclusions in my opinion. From what I've heard to get max benefit from "hyper-threading" the software needs to be written for it. I haven't seen anything from SoFo saying they have, so I would be cautious spending more for something you won't get much bang for your buck for.

A little more objection review:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2121991,00.html

briand wrote on 12/11/2002, 1:45 PM

For the most part, the kind of performance improvements you will see with HT are the same kind you would see with a dual processor system. That is to say, for a single copy of Vegas doing a rendering, HT will offer nearly no improvement in speed. For one copy of Vegas editing while another copy is rendering in the background (or two copies rendering), you will see an improvement. How much exactly is still being decided by a number of benchmarks.

Surge wrote on 12/11/2002, 6:09 PM

Hyper-Threading allows idle CPU resources to be used by other processes. In effect, this can result to your CPU being addressable as two discreet processors (as far as the OS is concerned). Many applications do not see large speed ups while running simply one application. However, under load where many applications are in use vying for processor resources Hyper-Threading can really pay off. Applications that are highly threaded also reap the rewards of Hyper-Threading. Judging from my expierences of running Vegas Video on dual processor machines, it would seem Hyper-Threading would pay off nicely. Applications do not have to be written specifically for Hyper-Threading to work. They simply have to be multi-threaded, which Vegas Video certainly is. For more in depth reading and performance benchmarking, check out http://www.tomshardware.com/site/supplement.html

Surge