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Hyperthreading
#1
Hi all,

The search function is down which is why I am asking.

I have a dual 2.8GHZ Xeon box that I am running source on at the moment with hyperthreading turned ON.

Should I have my provider disable this? When running TOP, I notice that srcds_i686 will jump around between processors, so I set affinity to one processor. Unfortunatly CPU utilization on a 26 player server bounces up to 100% on that one processor. I was on a AMD Athlon XP 3200+ beforehand and I was able to run a 34 player 66tick server without the PROC ever going above 90%.

My question is, should I disable hyperthreading?


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#2
Some find they get better performance if they disable hyperthreading. You don't have to disable it from the bios, you can also take SMP out of the kernel.
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#3
Ok, but if you take SMP out of the kernel, then it wont even support the dual proc server in non-hyperthreading mode correct?
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#4
Aha, nevermind, i didn't realize that it was a dual environment. There is another way to disable HT without turning off the second physical CPU But i can't think of it at the moment. So I guess your best bet is to disable HT from the BIOS. I'm not FULLY sure if setting number of CPUS to 2 will keep just BOTH CPU's and remove the 2 logicals, or have 1 CPU with 1 logical. Its worth a try, that way you don't have to keep bugging techs about rebooting even though thats what they are there for. Another thing to look into is ACPI, I *THINK* that would diable HT as well. I'm not possitive if that'll be partly disabled in ALL SMP even phyical dual machines.
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#5
You can disable hyperthreading, which will disable the hyperthreading ability on each processor, thereby making it a "dual proc" system to the operating system instead of a "quad proc" system.

If linux is like windows, you can add or remove hyperthreading or processors on the fly as long as the SMP kernel is installed.
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#6
To be honest, I couldn't tell you the servers i run are physical dual opterons. though we will be getting some dual cores soon eventually.
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