intel hyper threading: is it that good?

[KornNut]

I have a P4 processor with HT...

I have done alot of research,

http://www.intel.com/technology/hyperthread/
http://www.intel.com/techtrends/technologies/hyperthreading.htm

and I understand the concepts, but I am still left with a few questions:

* Is there even that big of a difference in the first place?

* Are the effects going to be immediatly seen or not until more and more software and hardware support multi threading?

* Is the difference in performance only seen in large tasks (like Far Cry, Doom 3, sound editting, video editting, etc) or is it seen with small tasks as well (internet and email use)?

* Is it big enough news that AMD will follow suit (maybe they have already)?

* are the two "virtual" processors running at 3.0 GHz (+/- .4 depending on the type of P4 processor) or are they each half of the speed of the overall processor?

* Intel states that this increases the amount of processes that can be done at once. Wouldn't you need to build up your RAM first?


I know that there are alot of questions, and I'm not expecting some one to answer all of them (if you did though, that would be amazing ).

Please, do not post any speculation, only facts... Thanks

 

[72montecarlo]

Basicly the meat and potatoes of it is your chip is going to run like a normal 3ghz p4 until you have two seperate programs running at once, then hyperthreading will allow you to run both at the same time and take up half the amount of time it normally would to complete both.

 

[koldapu]

hyperthreading is for multitasking

hypertransport (amd) can be used with one program

 

[jblaze725]

hyperthreading helps both with using multiple programs at once or when using a program written in a way to properly use the hyperthreading. according to lab tests hyperthreading is very useful with programs that really utilize it very good performance increases, but of course how much of this would you actually notice is hard to say.