hyperthreading, is it worth buying XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter billb
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billb said:
or can is stick with winme for now?
Click to expand...

I bought Windows millennium for $50 from target and stuck with it for
as long as I could. The memory limitations were the problem for me. You
can buy Windows XP for as little as $75 shipped, shop around.

I'm anything but a Microsoft advocate. Unless you want to live in a
closet (and use Linux), you have to pay your personal computer dues
from time to time. Much of the decision depends on what you want to use
your computer for. If you want the most functionality, including
gaming/communications, you have to keep upgrading. However
controversial, that's the way it is.

Have fun.
 
billb said:
or can is stick with winme for now?
Click to expand...

Windows XP is a completely different (and technically superior)
operating system under the hood, and if you're building a new machine,
it's preferable to any of the old Windows versions (95, 98, Me, etc.),
which were very poorly written in comparison.

However, if you have an an existing system that you're happy with
running whatever version of Windows you have, there's no reason to
change.

When and if you decide to get a new PC, though, you should install XP
(or whichever descendant of XP might be current by then). XP, 200x, and
NT are all in the same family, based on a code base that was completely
rewritten and is far more advanced than the older versions of Windows;
the differences are great enough that it's definitely worth having one
of the NT-based versions if you are installing a new machine.

In answer to the specific question, I don't believe earlier versions of
Windows even have any idea what hyperthreading is. I'm not sure if XP
uses it. Other systems such as UNIX can use it.
 
billb said:
or can is stick with winme for now?
Click to expand...

Win ME will not allow you to use many of the performance and utility (USB2, etc)
gains that XP will enable. If you're going to get a new motherboard or system,
it doesn't make a lot of sense to handicap it with an outdated OS.
 
Correct, XP takes off where NT started for reliability
o However verify all your h/w is *properly* supported under XP
---- in the early days there were no drivers for XP
---- MSFT is the friend of h/w makers - no driver = obsolete h/w
o In particular many USB modems do not work well under XP
---- some will work fine under Windows 2000
---- some seem to only work fine under Win98/ME

Re hyperthreading:
o Win2k -- not properly supported
o XP -- is properly supported

However, hyperthreading doesn't buy you a great deal:
o As usual you will find more of a benefit in benchmarks
---- it is 10-15%
o Than you will typically find in general tasks
---- it is probably 10% for those that utilise it

Hyperthreading is not Dual-CPU or Dual-Core-CPUs.
It is a step closer to improve interactiveness & usability, however
anyone who has used a dual-CPU knows the responsiveness when
doing multiple tasks is a vastly different & better experience.

A compromise on stability is to use Windows 2000:
o It is a good stable O/S - much improved over NT4SP6a
o It is generally supported - older h/w has more support

XP Home will support 1-CPU, XP-Pro will support 1-2 CPU.
That is nothing to do with HT, but actual *dual* CPU. Unless
you need domain capability, dual-CPU & remote-desktop you
can save a little with XP Home. Windows 2000 isn't much cheaper.

You need to consider s/w stability under XP:
o Office 97 is fine under Win98/NT4
---- under XP you will find parts of it cause problems (eg, Excel)
o Photoshop 4.1 is fine under Win98/NT4
---- under XP you can't work on jpg files, it crashes

So upgrading to an operating system can also trigger upgrades
to both software & hardware originally not envisaged. That can
be expensive where the added functionality isn't a requirements.

Those cheap Branded PCs are being done for a reason:
o Partly supply-demand inconsistency = price benefit = cheap product mix
o Partly to lock in upgrade capability & obsolescence including in O/S

Thus Branded PCs introduce some limitations:
o MSFT are moving to a more secure model - major implications
---- eventually implications in hardware, not just software
o White-Box & Branded once bought support that O/S not always later
---- upgrading to a later O/S may lack drivers
o White-Box & Branded ship with latest O/S
---- so on changing a PC your old s/w & h/w may not be supported
---- going back to a previous O/S may not be supported
---- which generates a new upgrade cycle to /maintain/ functionality

This is most severe with a laptop - where upgrade is limited, so you
are forced to replace vs upgrade, and so hit the compatibilty problems.
Laptops are great for generating more secondary upgrades per unit time.

Architecture wise, Win98 is vastly inferior to Win2k/XP.
o Whereas Win98 can manage just about a day of uptime in heavy use
---- plus crashes tended to take down the entire machine
o XP can manage several days if not weeks under the same conditions
---- of course, XP may force you to upgrade the s/w to achieve this :-)

So the issue isn't hyperthreading, it's verifying what the u/g breaks.
The benefits from an NT-derived O/S are however well worth having.
The main limit to using NT4 now is security if net connected, a few
bugs there are not correctable - but not present in Win2k. NT4W on
a laptop may a stable entity, Win98 made it a rebooting entity :-)
 
billb said:
or can is stick with winme for now?
Click to expand...

Both XP home and Pro support hyperthreading, your bios must support
hyperthreading also. Xp has become very stable OS but is very bloated and is
quite a large install with the service packs. From the thousands of installs
we have done I would say it is a must with new hardware to get the best from
it, some hardware manufacturers give only token support to older Windows and
so the drivers are not up to much. Modern graphics cards are particularly
better in XP.





--
Chris
Technical director CKCCOMPUSCRIPT
Apple Computers, Intel, Roland audio, ATI, Microsoft, Sun Solaris, Cisco and
Silicone Graphics.
Wholesale distributor and specialist audio visual computers and servers
FREE SUPPORT @,
http://www.ckccomp.plus.com/site/page.HTM
(e-mail address removed)
 
Mxsmanic said:
Hyperthreading isn't that big of a deal.
Click to expand...
Tell me about it. Had it on a P4. Enabled it and waited to see the
blistering speed increase. And waited, and waited, and waited...
 
Conor said:
Tell me about it. Had it on a P4. Enabled it and waited to see the
blistering speed increase. And waited, and waited, and waited...
Click to expand...

Intel never promised any blistering speed increases. All hyperthreading
does is allow two threads to execute simultaneously if they aren't using
the same logic areas of the microprocessor. So if one is doing
arithmetic instructions, say, while the other is doing shifts, they can
both run simultaneously. If both threads want to execute the same
instructions, though, one of them has to wait for the other.

This would seem to indicate that HT is useless for parallel processing,
but it can pick up some performance when you have two threads doing
completely different things. How often that happens in real life is an
open question.

Since it's free, and since it won't cause the system to run any slower,
you may as well use it.
 
Mxsmanic said:
Conor writes:




Intel never promised any blistering speed increases. All hyperthreading
does is allow two threads to execute simultaneously if they aren't using
the same logic areas of the microprocessor. So if one is doing
arithmetic instructions, say, while the other is doing shifts, they can
both run simultaneously. If both threads want to execute the same
instructions, though, one of them has to wait for the other.

This would seem to indicate that HT is useless for parallel processing,
but it can pick up some performance when you have two threads doing
completely different things. How often that happens in real life is an
open question.

Since it's free, and since it won't cause the system to run any slower,
you may as well use it.
Click to expand...

I'll second that. I find it most useful when I'm running two programs.
Say that Photoshop is chugging away on a batch of heavy processing. I
can do something else, like listen to music, with the other 'channel'.
This can be very nice.

I do have 1 or 2 programs that will eat up both 'channels'. I guess that
is using the whole processor efficiently.

Clyde
 
Howdy!

billb said:
or can is stick with winme for now?
Click to expand...

As I'm sure has been pointed out already - you can't hyperthread in
ME.

If you want to hyperthread, you need Win2K or WinXP.

RwP
 
Ruel Smith said:
It's worth having XP Pro for the sake of sanity...
Click to expand...


I'm not the brightest bulb in the pack, but one thing is certain, XP is
leaps and bounds better than its predecessor. And, for the most part, it is
stable.

Damn, that hurt to say that. <G>

Ed Cregger
 
I'm not the brightest bulb in the pack, but one thing is certain, XP is
leaps and bounds better than its predecessor. And, for the most part, it is
stable.

Damn, that hurt to say that. <G>

Ed Cregger
Click to expand...

XP is certainly way ahead of ME, but (IMHO) it's not a patch on 2k.
And don't assume that hyperthreading is a good thing - it just means
they've chopped the whole OS up into smaller parts that are more
independent and therefore get disconnected more easily. Eg try
selecting a few hundred files then in quick succession hit delete then
enter (as you would to confirm the delete operation in any Win
version). The enter will be accepted as a command to open all those
files before the delete request is processed - might even open
hundreds of instances of whatever prog opens those files. Just one
example.

Tony (remove the "_" to reply by email)
 
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