Enable or Disable Hyperthreading for Security / Performance?

I've installed the latest microcode updates for the i7-4500U CPU on my laptop - KB4497165 Intel microcode updates for Windows 10 v1903 - June 18

The referenced article (ADV190013 | Microsoft Guidance to mitigate Microarchitectural Data Sampling vulnerabilities) states To be fully protected, customers may also need to disable Hyper-Threading

Please advise:

1. How important is it from a security perspective to disable hyper-threading?
2. What benchmark do you recommend to use so I can estimate the performance hit with and without hyper threading?

Just Left Hyperthreading on myself, I paid for a processor with Turbo boost/Hyperthreading for a reason, i know for full protection they recommend disabling, but if it's a large performance hit, then i think i'll just take the risk with leaving it on

AMDMan2016 said:

Just Left Hyperthreading on myself, I paid for a processor with Turbo boost/Hyperthreading for a reason, i know for full protection they recommend disabling, but if it's a large performance hit, then i think i'll just take the risk with leaving it on

Thanks. I just discovered my Dell laptop has no option to turn off hyperthreading so my query is academic unless the feature can be disabled by other means.

Yeah i looked in my Asus G11CD-K bios, didn't see an option to turn off Hyperthreading, unless i missed it, but don't think i did, don't think my HP Omen Gaming Laptop does either

For technical reasons Hyperthreading must be enabled or disabled early in the boot process and that means in the BIOS. It cannot be done within Windows. The BIOS in a laptop will typically enable it to provide the full performance it is capable of. Often there will be no BIOS option to control this. A laptop BIOS typically provides only limited options. If there is no option to disable Hyperthreading is cannot be disabled.