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General discussion

AMD 64 vs P4HT

Oct 17, 2004 5:05AM PDT

I am in the market for a new notebook. I work with GIS and remote sensing software in which I frequently have multiple tasks running. I'm not very concerned with battery life or weight. So for my needs it seems like I would be losing some performance with a centrino system, right? What is the difference in systems running with AMD 64 processors and P4HT processors. Also, although the new windows is available for free download, isn't there a problem with drivers etc? Can you have both xp and the new system?
Thanks for any help

Discussion is locked

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Re: AMD 64 vs P4HT
Oct 17, 2004 7:14AM PDT

In your case, the HT has the edge for multiple active processes. In a year, when a 64-bit developer's package arrives from Microsoft (Visual 64?) I will be there...

Bob

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Re: AMD 64 vs P4HT
Oct 17, 2004 8:57AM PDT

There are very mixed results about hyperthreading. Some would say that hyperthreading increases performance when multitasking since it makes up for some of the lost performance on the Pentium 4 from the very long pipeline, and not having the memory controller on the cpu itself as the Athlon 64 does. Hyperthreading comes with plenty of extra operating system overhead though, so in many instances a system can be slower with hyperthreading enabled than when it is disabled. There are also sometimes issues of system instability when using hyperthreading with certain applications. Search the net for "disable hyperthreading" and see how many results you get. If hyperthreading is so great, then why do so many people want to disable it?

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Odd.
Oct 17, 2004 9:05AM PDT

We have such in the office/lab and never found that disabling HT helped. But we run own code and benchmarks...

I heard the same thing about dual CPUs, but we have them and the naysayers usually don't have such a system to try out.

Bob

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Re: Odd.
Oct 17, 2004 11:19PM PDT

If you enable hyperthreading, and just disable it, the extra OS overhead won't go away completely until the OS is reinstalled.

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Re: Odd. and ... BTDT.
Oct 18, 2004 12:41AM PDT

No payoff.

Have you done this firsthand? I have.

Bob

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Re: Odd. and ... BTDT.
Oct 23, 2004 10:19PM PDT

The true multitasking benefit will come with the 2 cpu 64bit chips out in the future.

Windows 64 service pack 2 has some hardware security features that only the Athlon 64 currently can utilize (hardware can detect and block some viruses/worms) and also when 64bit arrives (already on Linux) you will be better off there.

However, you will want to get another notebook no matter what within 2-3 years at most once Windows Longhorn 64bit arrives (and the new generation 64 bit multi cpu chips from both Intel and AMD) do don't overspend now (hopefully stay at or under $1500) and get what suits your needs now.