On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 14:32:25 -0800, DevilsPGD
wrote:

In message Russell May
was claimed to have wrote:

On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 15:14:12 -0600, Russell May wrote:

I have a 2002-vintage GA-8IEXP version 1.2 motherboard at home. It had
a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Northwood CPU. I flashed the BIOS to Gigabyte
version F9 (Award 6.00 PG 11/01/2002) which supposedly allows
hyperthreading, and then installed a used 3.06GHz Pentium 4 Northwood
(SL6PG) CPU which supposedly has hyperthreading capability. CPU-Z
reports the CPU is Family F, Model 2, Stepping 9, Rev D1 and the
chipset is i845E Rev E0.

I was hoping that hyperthreading would speed up simultaneously running
an FPGA compiler and an MS-DOS math program that I use for simulation
of the FPGA outputs. When I run both programs, a compilation takes up
to four times longer than when I run only the compiler, 24 minutes
versus 6 minutes. 6 minutes is slow but 24 minutes is intolerable. A
computer at work with dual-core CPU and dual-channel memory runs the
compiler in the same time (2.5 minutes) regardless of the MS-DOS
program. A faster computer at home is impractical right now.

The 3.06GHz CPU now runs stable and cool but without hyperthreading,
according to Belarc Advisor and Windows XP Task Manager. I have not
found anything in the BIOS setup about controlling hyperthreading.

How can I enable hyperthreading?

Well, I am embarased. The control is there in the Advanced section of
the BIOS setup, I just didn't see it. I enabled hyperthreading there
and booted. New hardware was found and I rebooted. Voila -
hyperthreading was enabled!

Nice catch And how's the performance treating you?

It's definitely better.

FPGA compile time without MS-DOS program running: 5 min 24 sec, about
1 minute faster than before.

FPGA compile time with MS-DOS program running: 7 min 6 sec, still not
good but a whole lot faster than before.

I also wanted to be able to play 720p X264 MKV video files without
stuttering. Previously stuttering was common. I had tried replacing my
64MB Radeon 9000 fanless video board with a 512MB ASUS AH3650 Silent
HDMI video board. It made no difference, probably because of the
motherboard's AGP 4X interface. The 3.06GHz CPU seems to have cured
the problem even while using the old Radeon 9000 video board.

Russ