Quote Originally Posted by Epsilon84 View Post
So you'd say no to 10 - 30% free performance?

Even without HT Nehalem is already heads and shoulders above any existing CPU in multi-threaded performance, HT is just the icing on the cake.

I bet if AMD somehow incorporated HT and even got a modest 5 - 10% boost you wouldn't find it so 'laughable' or 'academic'. Just a hunch.
Well, your hunch got me wrong... I do not have a benchmarking fetish. If I were all about 3dsMax, I'd be thrilled to have the 10% performance increase thanks to 8 virtual cores.

Well, the reality is that HT actually *decreases* performance on most apps that do not take advantage of multiple cores. That is why it was recommended to turn off HT on many P4 CPU's back then in the hey days. Heck, I'd love to turn it off until there are enough apps taking advantage of 8 cores. Most newer apps only use up to 2 cores, let alone 4 cores. Plus HT is known to bring some compatibility issues with a number of software programs/drivers. Man, I do not want even a bit of a headache from coping with any of those potential issues. If Core i7 does not allow for disabling of HT in the BIOS, I'd be further discouraged from buying it.