Hyper threading is essentially an architecture feature that creates a second "virtual processor" that handles a second thread of processes. The OS "sees" two processors where in fact there is only one physical core. This means that separate processes can be executed simultaneously without slowing each other down. Hence, you get an operational speed increase. Note, its actually a hardware feature, in that the internal data paths can handle multiple threads, rather than just some software feature.

To be very honest, Im a little underwhelmed by Yonah. I mean, its a brand new architecture from the worlds largest and richest (and market leading) chip company, and we have a design that finally catches up with something AMD layed down over 2 years ago. Its not even comparing like with like... lets compare it at least to the AM2 (ok, there wont be a MASSIVE performance boost, but it should be in the region of 2 - 5 %). Also, weve been told for years now, that clock speed doesnt mean a thing... so why in this review did they overclock the Yonah and then compare that with the STOCK AMD. They seem to think that just because the chips are clocked the same, they should suddenly perform the same. Well if that is the case, id love to see any of the Pentium line in that review clocked at 2.6 and see what happened... If you want to compare the results in a more honest way, you would have to overclock the AMD by a similar percentage as you OCed the Yonah.

Having said all of that, its nice to see Intel are taking this seriously again and have finally dropped Netburst. This can only really be a good thing at the end of the day.