Hi pilots,I'm installing my new system these days (Intel P 3,4) and I'm thinking about deactivating Hypterhreading for the first time (on my last machine it was activated).My question:did anybody of you build a serious test-setup with and without HT? With comparable numbers? My problem is: you can read here and there about switching of HT makes the FS faster. But you can read a lot of ... in the web. There are some guys who always want to tell you that their FS2004 is running with all sliders on max and 120FPS on their "200Mhz Intel celeron machine with Voodoo 3 Card". So I'm not sure about the HT issue. I know that FS is not supporting HT. But will it be faster without?What I need is a serious, empiric statement.Thanks for your answers.Regards, Roger

Roger - I've spent quite a bit of time testing FS9 performance both with HT enabled and with HT disabled. For what it's worth, on this system I see absolutely no noticeable difference at all. But it only takes a reboot to turn it on/off so why not just try it both ways and see what happens.DougP4 3.2E @ 3.680 (1.385 vCore - 230 FSB)Asus P4C800-E Deluxe (BIOS 1019)2 x 512MB Corsair TWINX CXM3700 (3-4-4-8)5 x 300GB WD HDD'sHercules 9800 Pro (128MB @ 410/360)Enermax 431W PSU

Hi Doug,thanks for your reply.Well, as I remember it's not just turning it off in the BIOS settings. Cause Windows (XP) installs itself different regarding the HT settings in BIOS. Installing XP and turning on HT afterwards is an absolute NO GO. And I think it's the same vice versa.To have any serious test-result one should 1. turn on HT, install XP, install FS and test2. turn off HT, install XP again, install FS and testThat's what I think/heard/read. If you have more accurate information...?Best regards,Roger

H/T on or off, doesnt make a difference, it was just a cheap marketing trick from Intel, at least thats what i think.OHN

Cheap trick? No better performance with HT? Ok, I'm with you. But the question is: is the FS actually performing BETTER without HT?If there's absolutely no difference, I don't need to completely set up my new system again (without HT).Someone with more information...?Best regards,Roger

>Cheap trick? No better performance with HT? Ok, I'm with you.>>>But the question is: is the FS actually performing BETTER>without HT?>>If there's absolutely no difference, I don't need to>completely set up my new system again (without HT).>>Someone with more information...?>>>Best regards,>>RogerHi,FS wasn't designed with HT in mind, but watch this space,the NEW weather prog - AS6 - has been written to take advantageof it. So some improvements should be seen!!!MickH.A.N.D.

I've heard that too Roger, but I've never seen any factual basis for it. Besides, if that were true one would never be able to enable HT on any machine where HT was disabled at the time of the initial OS install. WinXP does, indeed, install itself differently based on whether HT is enabled or disabled but it does so at boot-time, not when the OS is installed on the system. The BIOS HT setting provides a special set of protocols to the OS which can be executed/queried at bootup. WinXP then determines if HT is available then installs itself accordingly.Doug

I suspect the issue is that hyperthreading requires a different hardware abstraction layer (HAL). My understanding is that if you installed Win XP with an ACPI HAL defined (I think all HT MBs support this), then changing HT availability in BIOS will be picked up by Win XP and the appropriate HAL installed. But, if WinXP was installed with a Standard PC HAL, it can't be upgraded. The reason if I understand is that the ACPI HAL uses a different interrupt model. This allows interupts to be serviced in multiprocessor environments. The Standard PC HAL just virtualizes the old IBM AT (Intel) PIC, which can't support muti processors.You can check your HAL in the device manager, computer.scott s..

Hi Scott,that sounds familiar to me. So if I understand you right: - a XP, installed with HT enabled, can be downgraded to single processore only via BIOS switch (HT). AND it's possible to upgrade it again the same way? - a XP, installed without HT, can do nothing...I've also seen, that you're able to assign one single processor to the whole system via boot.ini. But I'm not sure if this does the trick. Regards, Roger

Does it make sense to change affinity of FS9.exe to CPU0 only and WideFS, TrackIR and other input controllers to CPU1? Has anyone tried it yet?Thanks.

Hyperthreading ticks me off. :) It was a great Intel marketing ploy for certain. I've seen no speed changes whether or not it's on or off, and that's after performing a full OS reload to insure HAL accuracy. It does seem to help a bit in system responsiveness in desktop applications, but when you saturate the processor with a game like MSFS, the overhead needed to make HT useful goes away. Long time ago in a sim far far away, there WAS a problem with some addon gauges in which a HT-enabled machine would be BIGTIME slow if you were running that gauge, but it was the fault of the gauge programming and has since been fixed. Since then, HT-on and HT-off has been essentially a non-issue. Now - DUAL-CORE is a different issue!! I would be far more interested to see how a DUAL-CORE processor handles MSFS+Addons rather than HT, simply because instead of sharing 1 processor, you actually have two processors on the die. Offloading weather processing and flight tracking (etc.etc.) to a second actual processor may lead to smoother performance during those addon's periods of activity. Can anyone with a dual core system comment?My next PC will most likely be some sort of the dual core/x2 architecture. (Saving pennies!)-Greg

>...it was just a cheap>marketing trick from Intel, at least thats what i think.>I don't think Intel would agree with you there and what you think != what is reality.Take the time to lookup what HT is and you will see that it is far from a "marketing trick". The fact that FS9 like many other programs don't take advantage of HT is not the fault of HT.It's just a feature that is available to a programmer to take of advantage of in a similar way to MMX, SSE etc. but is limited to certain Intel CPUs rather than being adopted across both AMD and Intel lines and so hasn't been utilised as much as it could of been. Disabling HT and reinstalling without its HAL shouldn't make any difference - HT doesn't 'get in the way' and hinder anything - the only time you may have a difference is if there are programs truly optimised to use multiple CPUs and they see a HT processor as two physical CPUs rather than a single HT CPU and split threads accordingly - in that case you may actually be better off for that program if HT was off, but that's a badly written program rather than a fault of HT.

Ok, any sense to put FS9.exe on VP0 and joystick profiles, WideServer.exe and others in the background on VP1?

I doubt it since CPU comparison between FS and all the others wouldn't be anywhere near equal at a guess so you might as well just run them all together and leave it to the CPU.Bu then, it won't harm to try...

Thanks, Man,indeed.