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Disabling SMT / Hyper-Threading for gaming

Also searched as: disable hyperthreading · disable smt · smt off · hyperthreading off · fewer cores faster

What it does

Turning off your CPU's second thread per core (Hyper-Threading on Intel, SMT on AMD) in BIOS, on the theory that fewer, 'cleaner' threads game better.

The honest verdict

On any modern 6-plus-core CPU this is a step backwards or a wash — you hand the game fewer threads to spread across and leave background work fighting it for what's left. It only ever helped ancient quad-cores choking on thread count, a problem today's CPUs don't have. There's no measurable win waiting here; if you want to prove it, change the one thing and watch your 1% low, which is exactly what it won't move. Compy never touches BIOS core settings.

How Compy treats it

Compy won't recommend it. If you're curious anyway: change one thing at a time, measure it on your own rig, and revert unless it's clearly better — that loop is exactly what Compy is built around.

The Compy Blackbook holds 174 graded entries like this one, judged against your hardware — and every change it does make is reversible, with the receipt to prove it.

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