Intel Lynnfield Core i5-750 & Core i7-870 Processor Review

Feature Test: Hyper-Threading (HT)

The Nehalem microarchitecture marks the return of Hyper-Threading (HT), which is a feature that was first implemented on the Pentium 4 "Northwood" but with little success. Thankfully, as we demonstrated in our Core i7 review, this new microarchitecture has really been designed to take advantage of HT's multi-threading performance benefits.

Intel is so confident in the value of Hyper-Threading that with Lynnfield they have segregated the models based on support for this feature, with the cheaper Core i5-750 lacking HT. So does Hyper-Threading's increased multi-threading performance really warrant a price premium? Let's find out with a small selection of multi-threaded applications:

	Intel Core i7-870 - HT Off	Intel Core i7-870 - HT On	Performance Difference
Cinebench R10 64-bit: xCPU	16170	18115	+12%
WinRAR 3.8.0 Compression	185 secs.	162 secs.	+14%
x264 HD Benchmark	21.31 FPS	26.33 FPS	+24%
3DMark Vantage: CPU Score	14639	19543	+33%
Far Cry 2	72.18 FPS	71.40 FPS	0%
Left 4 dead	126.11 FPS	128.97 FPS	+2%
Street Fighter 4	192.76 FPS	192.69 FPS	0%
Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark	138 Score	152 Score	+10%

The results speak for themselves. In highly multi-threaded applications, HT can make a significant difference, speeding up a real-life workload by 12% to 24%.

As you can see in Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, Street Fighter 4, even games with solid multi-threaded engines don't usually recognize more than four-threads, which negates any possible HT-related performance gains. We are quite confident that HT-friendly engines are coming down the pipeline though, so Hyper-Threading may eventually play a role in gaming scenarios.