Hyperthreading
 

Just been reading the Videoguys website. On it they suggest that hyperthreading advantages can be completely lost if you are running one other application that doesn't support hyperthreading.

To what extent is this true? When they say applications, does that include little things in the system tray such as sound card configuration utilities etc?

I'm not exactly sure what you or that article is pointing at, but
it does not matter which applications you run. If you are running
multiple applications (and that even includes little tools) that
require CPU time it will schedule them on both "virtual" CPU's.

A multi-threading application will truly take advantage of the
architecture within one application. So you will see a CPU usage
on both "virtual" CPU's with such an application. Otherwise an
application will just use one of the two.

I've never heard of running an application that does NOT support
HT will render the whole system useless. As you figured that
would mean it would never be of any use at all.

Now do keep in mind a system with a HT cpu is not the same
in performance as 2 physical cpu's!

Excellent, thanks.

I'm still umming and ahhing over components for a new editing PC and just wanted to make sure of any issues that might present themselves.

And go for XP as OS, because W2K has problems with hyperthreading.

Yes.

One thing though, some recommend XP Pro and others say that XP Home is fine. From what I can gather XP Pro would only be of any extra use if I was running a server or something. How much truth is there to this?

Well it has better networking if you want to connect to other
computers indeed. If it is a standalone then it won't do you
much good.

The Microsoft site has a comparison of Pro versus Home. Anyways, here's the short version of it:
Pro lets you network >10 computers.
Pro has support for multiple processors. Home supports HT.
Pro has better foreign language support.
Pro might have some extra tweaking options.
Pro has remote desktop, which lets you control computers remotely. You can get ultraVNC instead (free) which is very similar.

I think that's it.

Excellent, thanks very much.

Another thing I've been wondering, and it is going off the original topic somewhat is which motherboard is considered the most rock solid HT capable P4 800fsb (not Prescott) Dual memory board? There seem to be a lot of good boards out there, but many of them seem to need a new BIOS download to get them fully capable.

I had been considering the Abit IC7 Max. But I have heard there can be IRQ problems with those boards.

What are the Asrock boards like? Asus seem tempting, but I've never been impressed by their support (never replying to emails etc).

Intel boards are considered to be the best. From annecdotal evidence from the guy who runs dv411.com (something like that), Intel boards are rarely DOA compared to Asus boards.

2- Probably start a new thread for new topics to avoid hijacking threads.

3- IRQ problems: Most motherboards have PCI slots that are hardwired to certain IRQs. To change the IRQ you need to move the PCI card to another slot. All boards have this problem AFAIK, unless it doesn't have many PCI slots.

It might also be that certain of the on-board devices don't share IRQs well. I don't know if that's the case and I'm not familiar at all with that motherboard.

My Dell system uses an Asus board and I have dual channel memory (2GB). No problems.

I've also heard MSI is "the best". Their BIOS is supposedly the easiest to work with and they do auto updates available on the MSI site. I think they're the only ones that offer that.

Alex, your Dell system uses an Asus board?! I thought Dell's motherboards were always custom-made by Intel (they also happen to be proprietary designs).

2- The BIOS doesn't make a big difference IMO as you generally do not need to go into it (except to change boot order of stuff). Even if you mess up the BIOS settings, all boards will let you recover by resetting the CMOS jumper. You can mess up the BIOS on any board by flashing it and screwing that up. Some MSI boards have 2 BIOS chips so you're ok if you flash your BIOS badly.

But as far as rock solid stability goes, I would consider a board to be rock solid if it doesn't need BIOS flashes/updates to be working well.

3- I would be ok with getting a non-Intel board, as motherboards are rarely DOA. Just avoid the crappy brands like PC Chips/ECS (that's the only crap brand I know of).