Is Hyper-Threading (SMT) BAD for 3D CAD? Benchmark Testing On & Off

Autodesk Inventor. Taking real world datasets and performing heavy stress tests with hyper-threading on and off to see if there's any measurable impact on performance to having it either way. The reason for this is that there is legacy advice still being presented which suggests that disabling hyperthreading is beneficial due to the applications being single threaded in nature.

*FAO the purists, I'm referring to it exclusively as Hyper-Threading in the interests of simplicity, and it's just a fact that most people know it as that. If I was to refer to the Intel and AMD term each and every time I mentioned it, it would sound silly and I'd have developed arthritis in my jaw by the end of recording this video.

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#Tech3D #Autodesk #Hyperthreading #CPU

[NeilD]

FYI - the "Open Large Assembly" test was a single threaded operation, if any test should have been affected by hyperthreading being disabled it would have been that one.
Also, quite important this... someone mentioned that disabling hyperthreading can reduce heat output on the CPU which then allows you to get a bigger overclock... which then gets you better single threaded Inventor performance! (I think that might also be what that Big Box guy was saying?). That's nonsense. First, if disabling hyperthreading allowed for a significantly higher overclock, you'd know about it and it would be routine to do that in all CPU testing, but it isn't. Second, I'm not disputing that it could lower heat output, but any overclock gain is going to be minimal, we're talking 100Mhz at best. I've already proven in previous videos that 100Mhz yields very little to no measurable performance gain, certainly not enough to warrant disabling a huge slice of your CPU. Thirdly... I never once have and never will recommend that anyone should overclock a system which is your primary source of income. So all of my advice here is based on STOCK frequencies.

[keithspencersr.]

Great video, glad you did it, explained it to my students the same way.

[johnstondesign]

I saw the thread yesterday and knew this video was coming soon !!!

[jeffreybarrero]

Completely agree. I went down that Rabbit hole last year, and I was glad because I learned a lot from it but it was a bit annoying not going to lie. I most certainly hope and expect to computing hardware performance exceeds all CAD applications in the future, we shall just learn to be patient or improve efficiencies in our own work flows. Unless the user is using a bottom shelf computer expecting a miracle, than I feel bad for them and I am glad I am not in their shoes.

[Serendipity]

The only reason to ever turn hyperthreading off is when you have a software that is licensed per thread (yes, those exist).

[flypic]

Thanks Neil. I tried to find info on this many years ago. We had 4 core Xeons with the hyperthreading off. I couldn't find any info so switched on and tested. Off again and tested quite a few times. I found the same as you so switched mine on. They were slow Xeons so the extra cores meant that I could assign cores to other tasks and leave Inventor chunking away at large assemblies.
Years later and many upgrades later our Xeons still only score (6. something ) on the Inventor benchmark test. That's still much quicker than our vault server in another country. I just do as I'm told and they pay me for it! I gave up trying to get faster computers. ( Deaf ears ) :) This very interesting though. Thanks again. Do you plan on testing the new AMD CPUs? They're showing very quick single core speeds without overclocking. Jim

[fjnaglend]

Hey Neil. Quick question if you don't mind. I was watching one of your recent videos about the Inventor Bench. You stated that Inventor only uses the CPU, and doesn't rely on the GPU at all. Is the same true of Inventor studio? I recently upgraded to an RTX 2070 and tried to re render an old model animation from 2005-6. At 1024x768 @ 30FPS. It did about 15 seconds per frame. Is this all CPU or is Studio using the GPU? Thanks in advance for your time. God bless

[TheCuttz]

Fingers crossed inventor improves it's performance for the future. I just bought a 3950x for my workstation. 16c and 32t there is no way in hell I'm turning off hypertheading. I have inventor open auto cad open photoshoot open chrome open etc etc....in real world it wouldn't make sense for me to disable the PC performance as a whole....

Inventor just need to come to the party and improve there software performance. IMHO.

Thanks for the video

[leo_warren]

Thank you Neil, so now for most hardware questions I can consult the Book of TFI, and send them this way to hopefully understand.
I kind of gave up with him, as if he would'nt believe someone who based a lecture and has done extensive testing then I didn't stand a chance.
However the thread had got buried unless it gets brought back up.

[MrDaniell]

You get a lot of I am a programmer (not a cam programmer) in Linux that go on about what fusion would be like under Linux, you challenge them the on there claim they do not reply.

[ArturoTabera]

i.m.o. rendering is no CAD application, although common these days. This buck_bimbox is right. If you can have all 6 cores max. turbo at 5, 0 -5.x GHz sustained turbo speed it is basically the best option for this kind of software which is typically limited by 1 core clocking as fast as you can have for like CAD, Adobe Suite, etc. You can overclock a CPU more without HT on. This will result in 0-15% shorter cpu times depending on the task.
The important reason/goal for all this "effort":
optimizing workflow/waiting times during the creative part of work. It is essential for artists, engineers, creatives, designers, etc. a 10 second break is interrupting your "flow" far more than a 10 minute render that you can plan on (is there a background render?)
p.s.. you may put longer tasks on when leaving desk or coffee break.
If you have no overclockable CPU then "simply" turning off HT will result in a minimal boost but you will lose time on on rendering/data compression/video encoding.

[Tb]

I actually ran several simulations twice on Autodesk CFD 2019 to compare HT on/off settings.
And i have posted this on the autodesk forums. (look for CFD 2019 hyperthreading on or off).
HT enabled is faster! its not much faster, but still faster...

[Mr.Poseidon]

My disk is fully encrpted with Veracrypt. If i turn Hyper-Threading off my computer will slow down %50. Hyper-Threading is good..

[TheMasterWanker]

Just turned off hyper treading... If that's all, I rather have 4 CPU's showing then 8 in my task manager.

[tomast]

nothing is worse than as an OS throwing one program from core to core like a hot potato....