To use Hyper thread or Not?

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I just started a new job with a brand new Dell Precision Work Station. I'm not sure about all the specs other than it is running 2gigs ram and has a good NVIDIA FX video card.

My question is: should I turn off the hyper threading? I was told that with it on SolidWorks will only use half the processor's capabilities.

I do some multitasking between SW, Outlook, Excel & Word. But primarily I have only SW and Outlook running.


have fun make money
Paul

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Unless you have dual CPUs hyperthreading does not appear to help SW.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/pentium4xeonhyperthreading/

Toward the bottom of the article:-

In the end, Intel admits that in some cases the performance can fall with the Hyper-Threading enabled, for example, in case of empty wait cycles. We just can assume that this is the very reason (the detailed examination of the SolidEdge and SolidWorks code is not the aim of this article). You all know how conservative the developers of CAD applications are; they prefer realiability and do not hurry to rewrite codes with innovations in programming.

You would probably do better to tweak the VM & use the /3GB switch.

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

http://www.panoramafactory.com/discus/messages/17/313.html?1057432320

See also

http://www.solidworks.com/swexpress/mar04/200403_techtip_02.cfm

Helpful SW websites every user should be aware of faq559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions faq559-1091

 

[SBaugh]

Hyperthreading cuases slow performance when having a single CPU, because you are not using the full CPU power with it turned on. I suggest to all my customers to switch it off. We had a customer complaining about slow performance. By turning HT off his performance was much better and he was happy once again.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[whippet]

Thanks to all.

have fun make money
Paul