# of cores and hyperthreading

[amagras]

Hello fellows,

I'm running PT 10.3.10 on Windows 7 pro x64 and I have a Dell xps 8700 with core i7 4770, 16gb RAM, etc.

Recently I noticed that every time I get the famous message saying that Protools is running out of CPU power my CPU was actually under 50%. After a quick Googleing I found and read all the threads on hyperthreading (HT) there are so before doing any changes I grabbed a paper and a pencil while opening one of my busiest projects:

-Before deactivating HT I was using no more than 50% before getting the warning, that was using 6 cores at 99%.
-Changing to 1 or 2 cores created funny noises making PT unusable.
-With 3 cores everything went smooth, the CPU went over 75-80% with the same busy project.
-With 4 cores the CPU went down to 47-51 and I believe this is the best performance I could get with HT activated.
Now...
-After deactivating HT I got the same performance as with 4 cores using only 3 cores, this is around 47-51%.

The point in which I would like to hear your opinion guys is: would it be better to leave only one core for OS with no HT and keep using 3 cores for PT
or
RE-activate HT to have 4 cores for OS, being forced to use 4 cores in PT? As I pointed before PT performance is the same with these two configurations, I just want to give the rest of the programs the best possible resources.

Thanks beforehand to all of you, duc.avid.com rocks!