How to Enable Hyperthreading In Dell OTS

LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, Alaska Icrontian
edited May 2004 in Hardware
I've got three Dell Octapus (Octiplex) 270 computers at the office, all of which have Intel P4 2.8GHz/800Mhz CPUs. I am not sure if these machines are hyperthreading capable or not. There is a hyperthreading enable/disable entry in the BIOS, but selecting enable does not do anything. The BIOS remains at the HT-disabled state. As far as I can tell, the BIOS is not password protected, as I was able to change boot order.

Anyone know how to enable HT with these proprietary-crippled CPU, corporate wonders?

Comments

  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    Weird - I have an office full of those, and HT was enabled from the factory as a default, and works just fine.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited April 2004
    You might try calling Dull's tech support and talking to someone who sounds kinda like Hadji from the Johnny Quest cartoons and see what they say. ;)
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    I have an office full of those, and HT was enabled from the factory as a default

    Arrrggghhh - envy....and so forth.

    Yes, I guess I'll try calling Dell.
  • JonshandbrakeJonshandbrake PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA Member
    edited April 2004
    Do they have 2 sticks of ram? Don't know for sure, but perhaps you cannot change the bios till they have the 2 sticks. (Just thinking out loud, lol)
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited April 2004
    Hmm, I don't know! These computers are so new, I haven't opened them yet. Come to think of it, the cases do not have seals on them; no instant warranty void if I open them.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    Weird - I have an office full of those, and HT was enabled from the factory as a default, and works just fine.

    OK, I think I found the problem. After searching Dell's service support forums, I've discovered that Win2K and 2K Pro don't support hyperthreading. Prime, are your Octiplex boxes running WinXP?

    Jons~. Yes, my Octiplexes each have two sticks of RAM.
  • SputnikSputnik Worcester, MA
    edited May 2004
    they should support HT, ther'es no reason not to. XP pro and 2000 are both SMP enabled up to 2 CPU, which includes 2 logical CPUs.... very strange.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    Hyperthreading is very much different from SMP.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    Exactly -- hyperthreading is essentially enhanced multi-tasking that enables a CPU to split its working capacity more efficiently between simultaneously running programs and apps. Works very well with Folding. Actually, I came up several posts in different sub-forums at the Dell site, all stating that only XP, Win2K Server, and Win2003 support hyperthreading.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    That much is true. 2k pro doesn't do HT.
  • gtghmgtghm New
    edited May 2004
    That was going to be my guess was the OS didn't support it...

    Was there a particular reason that brand new HT Dells didn't come from the company with XP Pro as the defualt OS?

    Unless they were specificly ordered I can't imangine why you would get a HT rig and no OS to support it...

    Weird...

    "g"
  • SputnikSputnik Worcester, MA
    edited May 2004
    I knew it was very different from SMP, however i's under the impression that it worked transparent to the OS as if it was an SMP machine. does make sense though, you would need a scheduler that knew that the chip was not 2 CPUs, but just did 2 threads at times. thanks for the enlightenment with 2k not liking it.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    Was there a particular reason that brand new HT Dells didn't come from the company with XP Pro as the defualt OS?
    Yes, because many large organizations want to stick with the 'tried and true', which in our case is Win2K/Pro.

    Oh, and yes, Dell can advertise the great revolutionary benefits (good, but overstated) of hyperthreading, but fail to mention in their advertising hype that HT is crippled without the proper OS. But of course, the admin-types who hold the automation purse strings usually have little knowledge of hardware. (My organization received a couple hundred good quality KVM switches months ago. The automation numbnuts didn't realize that the switches needed cable sets! I bought my own in frustration waiting for the creaky bureaucracy to respond.)
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    I knew it was very different from SMP, however i's under the impression that it worked transparent to the OS as if it was an SMP machine.
    Oh, I see your point. Yeah, I was under that impression too. With that said though, I don't know when MS added HT support to Windows XP. SP1?
  • gtghmgtghm New
    edited May 2004
    Leonardo wrote:
    Oh, I see your point. Yeah, I was under that impression too. With that said though, I don't know when MS added HT support to Windows XP. SP1?

    AFAIK, XP has always had it... I know that from the first day I built my Xeon rig and installed XP Pro from my legal disk that was made prior to SP1 the installation recognized multi CPUs since day one... total of 4 cpus... :)

    That being said I thought that 2K pro had that ability too... AFAIK the conditioning factor was that the OS had to be able to support more than one CPU natively which I thought 2K pro did... In fact I thought that all the NT kernal OS's did except for XP home and maybe 2k... I thought that I read some where that MS did that because the second CPU needed a second license technically... Didn't 2K pro and NT actually support more than 2 CPU's, I mean, multi CPUs have been out forever...?

    Thinking about it now..., I'm not sure that the only pre-requsette for HT to work is the way the OS is installed... for example when you install XP Pro on a HT rig all you do is hit F5 on the first setup screen and that brings up the list of install options... there all you do is choose multiprocessor ACPI computer and the installation does the rest.

    As far as the OS is conserned if HT is enabled in the BIOS then the OS thinks there is physically 2 seperate CPUs... It dosen't know the difference... thats the way I have understood it to work... and I think that 2K pro is the same way...
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    Well, the technical specifications are not exactly known to me. I'll keep searching. I'd love to get those 2.8GHz Dells folding two instances each under hyperthreading.
  • gtghmgtghm New
    edited May 2004
    Not sure how to fix your problem, but it appears that Win 2K pro SP4 does support HT so I would call dell.

    http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread/t-68019.html

    http://www.houseofhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24844&page=2

    http://www.mcse.ms/archive41-2003-12-224974.html

    From MS
    http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/professional/evaluation/sysreqs/default.asp

    Here is the KB to enable the affinity filter tool, so 2K must allow for HT as if its set in the BIOS properly and the OS's HAL is installed for mulit processing then the OS dosen't care if its a physical or therotical processor it still sees it as one...

    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;252867&Product=win2000


    GL,
    "g"
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    Thanks. I'll see if I've got time when I come back from next business trip.
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