Why Intel is Abandoning Hyperthreading - 40 GAMES TESTED P-Cores vs E-cores vs Hyperthreading

I was prompted to make this video as we have Intel’s Arrow Lake-S desktop series CPUs on the horizon. As some of you may know Intel will be dropping hyperthreading, which has been a staple feature of their CPUs for over a decade. In this video, I put Intel's core i9-13900K through its paces, testing it across 40 different games to see how the P-core, hyperthreading, and E-core architecture handles real-world gaming performance. With hyperthreading under the spotlight, we explore whether it's still relevant in modern gaming or if Intel's new approach has left it behind. Whether you're a PC gamer or hardware enthusiast, this deep dive will give you a clearer picture of how Intel's latest innovations stack up against today’s demanding titles. Stay tuned for some surprising results!

00:00 Intro
01:09 Why I’m testing this
02:29 Test setup
04:20 Benchmarks
15:21 40 Game Average
16:16 Conclusion

TEST SPECS
CPU: INTEL CORE i9-13900K
Overclock Settings: P-Cores 5.7GHz, E-Cores 4.6GHz, Ring 5GHz
Cooler: MSI E360
Motherboard: MSI Z790 CARBON MAX WIFI 2 ITX
RAM: PATRIOT VIPER XTREME 5 7600MT/s C36
GPU: MSI RTX 4090 GAMING X TRIO (Core +205, Memory +1500)
Storage: CORSAIR MP600 PRO LPX 4TB GEN 4
PSU: EVGA G3 1000

Check out my 13900K Hyperthreading 40 Game Benchmark Vid

Watch my 13700K E Core ON vs OFF 40 Game Benchmark video

Watch my RTX 4090 vs 3090 42 Game Benchmark video

Watch my RTX 4090 at 2GHz video

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#Intel #arrowlake #pcores #hyperthreading

[intelshill]

Removing hyperthreading from the design is very different from turning hyperthreading off. When you remove it from the design, it allows you to put everything else closer together and frees up that die space.

[saiprasad]

E cores are the new hyperthreading cores in case of Intel. I had guessed this move when Ecores came out.

[Jeboi]

ppl forget that when HT is turned off you get extra room to overclock you cores with 200mhz. got mine from 5.6 to 5.8 ghz on a 14600kf.

[AdaaDK]

i would love to see this test on a 12600k or 13600k, to see if the lower core count there changes anything. manny more people prob has the I5´s over the I7´s anyhow.

[Sheerwinter]

Instead lf having a 8 core ultra 3 205 (4p+4e)
I would rather have a 6p core 6t (no hyperthreading).

🗿It feels alright i guess.

[zodwraith]

Hyperthreading hasn't really been necessary essentially since we hit 8 cores, and has given ever diminishing returns as core counts continued to rise. The 9700k was really no slower than the 9900k and it had hyperthreading fused off. Any difference between them can be 100% chalked up to their clock speed difference.

But you need to keep in mind _removing_ HT all together will be more effective than just disabling it because you're removing a chunk of the pipeline effectively shortening it, which is _always_ beneficial.

Honestly I hope Arrow Lake ends up being a home run for Intel. Not that IGAF about Intel, but they need a win after the beating the company and it's stock has taken the last couple years. Anyone that celebrates tens of thousands of people getting laid off needs to seriously check their fanboism and AMD is once again proving they're perfectly happy to increase prices the second they have no competition. Just look at Threadripper pricing.

[fullmoon]

So Hyper-Threading are bad and more thread are good.
Maybe a 16C no HT of P-core are the best instead of 8P/16T+16E?

[bios]

Instead of all this fafo intel should just give us a non hybrid CPU. Nobody wants to test this shit. I’ll take a Monolithic 12p core CPU with no hyperthreading anyday over having e cores

[kristof]

HT was a great solution in the dual and quad core times more then a decade ago. Now it's getting redundant for 6 cores and especially for +8 core designs.

[heickelrrx]

SMT is Ancient Tech, While it still have it use on Server, on consumer devices, Modern Smartphone already ditch that,
Apple Sillicon do not support this as well,
If Intel decided to kill off SMT, it's step to the right direction since the Consumer Hardware is moving away from that.
SMT still acceptable of Workstation, but for consumer hardware, it's not longer necessary,
Keeping SMT just because the Tech Community want to see 2x Thread as tradition is foolish,

I hope AMD also can follow the same path, like having Zen 5 + Zen 5C on consumer platform. that way the scheduling can be streamlined on consumer OS

[defectiveclone]

Gaming sure.. everything else.. not so much.. intel is desperate to save power and win the gaming crown. No body knows if they will.

[toddsimone]

This proves how everything needs software control to park cores on an individual game basis. Intel Dynamic Tuning or APO comes to mind but is it even getting support anymore?

[SiliconSteak]

Danny putting work with these tests. Appreciate your attention to detail brother

[PAIN-otcj]

good Freaking Video danny and I havent even watched pass the intro, I myself keep HT off as it allows a higher all core oc 59p on my 14900k and a higher head room for ram OC 8200

[yonghominale]

Everybody must disable the E-cores. Not sure about SMT because the general consensus appears to be you need it. E-cores need to be shut down because they are putting stress on the Ring bus which lead to voltage spikes and latency. E-cores are useless for most people unless maybe you are streaming.

[mazing]

Nice work. I don't think I have seen any of the other tech sources work on this!

This is very useful data to look at when the new chips come out, where the die is smaller and can help others make informed decisions to upgrade or not.

[GFClocked]

I hope it's good, just for competition. But even if it is, the intel brand has lost credibility in general, and now with oxidation-gate and how they handled it.. They really need to say EXPLICITLY that they will take care of you if there's an issue AND confirm platform support for 4-5 years. Otherwise i don't see them gaining mind share. Me and all my friends are laughing at intel, they're a laughing stock these days. They will need to do a lot of work to turn this around.

[MrHC]

Imagine owning an Intel 13th and 14th lol. Silly bugger.

[VioletGOKU]

Thanks for your hard work and putting the results together. Definitely gives us an idea as to why Intel went with the strategy. With scheduling optimizations that they spoke about, it should be even better across the board. With that said, E-cores make sense for laptop CPUs like Lunar Lake for maximizing battery life, but for desktop CPUs I wish Intel focused on optimized P-core only configs

[Razzy_III]

HT being removed supposedly was/is a step towards a more flexible method of splitting tasks between cores (potentially even splitting P cores all the way down to 4 threads each). Supposedly we’re left with simply no HT on 15th gen because this method wouldn’t be ready in time and it wasn’t worth putting HT back in. Generally this has been referred to as “rentable units” the past few years but there’s a lot of pure speculation and we don’t have any details beyond rumors and a couple patents that have been found.

Could also be breadcrumbs that exist entirely to throw off competition, or something that hit a brick wall and was ultimately cancelled some time ago.