hyperthreading

[Guest]

I have a twin 3GHz PC with hyperthreading. I have XP Media Center Edition
2005 and use sonicencoders to burn video dvds of digital TV recordings and it
takes a long time (2.5-4 hours to burn a 2 hour movie). I think virtually all
the resource needed is processor resource.

When it is transcoding the file, if I look in task manager, one of the
processors shows as being highly used (80-100%) - but generally the other is
idle, unless I'm doing something else.

Is this the behaviour I should expect (hyperthreading is a mystery to me)? I
would have hoped that it would use all the processing power it has available
to it - is there any way I can exploit the fact that I have two processors?

Cheers

Eric

 

[MAP]

I have a twin 3GHz PC with hyperthreading. I have XP Media Center
Edition 2005 and use sonicencoders to burn video dvds of digital TV
recordings and it takes a long time (2.5-4 hours to burn a 2 hour
movie). I think virtually all the resource needed is processor
resource.

When it is transcoding the file, if I look in task manager, one of the
processors shows as being highly used (80-100%) - but generally the
other is idle, unless I'm doing something else.

Is this the behaviour I should expect (hyperthreading is a mystery to
me)? I would have hoped that it would use all the processing power it
has available to it - is there any way I can exploit the fact that I
have two processors?

Cheers

Eric

Hyperthreading only works if the program you are using is designed to use
it,
I have tried Sonic and don't like it very much but thats just me,
transcoding will take some time as it is converting the file format to an
ISO file.

but generally the
other is idle, unless I'm doing something else.

This is normal.

 

[Guest]

You probably have already done this, but hyperthreading needs to be turned on
in your BIOS, right? Intel also has a hyperthreading test utility download
available. Not ot sure whether it is processor dependent and don't have URL.
Sounds like a screaming machine.

 

[Bob I]

The program has to be written multi-threading expressly to take
advantage of HT or multiple CPU's.