The short answer is no, not even close. However, if the CPU does offer Hyper Threading I will definitely chose it over the same CPU with no Hyper Threading. Hyper Threading CPU’s can get a maximum of 30% boost by utilizing such technology.
A core is still a core even if it has Hyper Threading even though HT splits the core into two logical processors. Unlike traditional dual processors that use two separate physical processors, the logical processors in a hyper threading core share the resources of the core including the execution engine, cache, and system bus interface. When multiple applications / threads are delegated to a single core, the operating system manages the thread execution on that CPU giving each one of them a time slot in which application can run its code. The process of managing the threads by the OS is called “context-switching”. “Contex-Switching” has its overhead resulting in CPU cycles being wasted when switching between threads instead of executing the commands in the thread pipeline. This is where Hyper Threading comes handy, it handles the CPU time slicing, and thread swapping more efficiently then the OS and Context-Switching, and it is transparent to the operating system, thus giving the CPU a performance boost up to 30%. In short, it allows you to offload task scheduling from kernel to CPU. The instructions are still piped into the core itself one at a time, but once in the core if one of the logical processors of the cores gets halted or busy, the next instruction is piped through the next logical processor.
