P4 to become a better folding option . . .

[dimmreaper]

Was just thinking. The 3.05GHz and faster P4s will have hyperthreading enabled. The primary reason why the P4 sucks for folding is that the deep pipeline means the CPU sits idle between FAH's many dependant instructions. Hyperthreading will allow two FAH core processes to occupy the pipeline at the same time. I estimate that hyperthreading enabled P4s may provide 50-90% more performance in FAH, but you will have to run two processes to take advantage of the hyperthreading.

In other words: A hyperthreading enabled P4 running two FAH processes may come much closer to equaling the weekly output of a K7 running one process, tic-for-tic!

Anyone considering dumping stupidly huge amounts of money in to a K7 system, I am advising you to hold off until November when the new P4 stepping should ship.

[Holst]

It will be interesting to see if hyperthreading is all its been made out to be.
I think this might close the gap a bit, but I dont think it will let the P4 catch up.
Plus the hyperthreading chips are likely to be the higher end and more expensive, and a XP-2400@2.4gig will be a tough act to follow.

Id probably also hold off on buying if you in no hurry, but you cant go wrong with AMD DDR and a Xp-1600 for cost / performance at the moment.

[Allan]

Originally posted by Holst
Id probably also hold off on buying if you in no hurry, but you cant go wrong with AMD DDR and a Xp-1600 for cost / performance at the moment.

I totally agree!!

[dimmreaper]

Originally posted by Holst
It will be interesting to see if hyperthreading is all its been made out to be.

When you understand what is going on in there(in terms of super pipelines and code parallelism and dependancies), you realize that it can't possibly be all it is made out to be. Different types of applications react differently to simultaneous multi thread execution. Some application will infact run slower, perhaps as much as 40% slower. Given both the nature of this application(FAH) and hyperthreading, I have no choice but to believe it will help this application to a great degree.

The real shame with hyperthreading is that the OS can not activate and deactivate it as it finds neccessary. I feel that may be a feature future Intel CPUs will boast.

[Allan]

Triple-poster!!!

[dimmreaper]

At least I was decent enough to delete the first two. That'll teach me to hit submit multiple times hoping it will speed up my dial-up connection!

[Allan]

Still no broadband out in the wild?

I can't wait for mine to "arrive". Now I live in the centre of the city, I really NEED that 1 megabit line, LOL. (Yeah, showoff, I know!)

[muddocktor]

It will definitely be interesting to see how much it will speed up P4 processing, but I'm not sure on the performance/cost ratio. If the 3+GHz P4 costs $500-600, then for the same price I can put 2 XP2600+ procs in my dual rig, which should smoke the P4 on WU processing, IMHO.