Why do all the Windows Desktop Gadgets tell me my 4 core processor has 8 cores?

Question

Why do all the Windows 7 Desktop Gadgets tell me my 4 core processor has 8 cores? I have an Intel i7 870 with 4 cores. Yet every gadget I try tells me I have 8. Whats up?

Thanks

score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 20 '11 at 21:56

13

Your processor has HyperThreading, giving it two virtual/logical cores per physical core.

answered Jan 20 '11 at 21:56

squircle

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3 answers less than 32 seconds apart, has to be a record. – Moab Jan 20 '11 at 22:07

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 20 '11 at 21:56

7

Sounds like your processor is hyper threaded which means each core will have two threads, Windows will see these threads (logical cores) as additional cores.

answered Jan 20 '11 at 21:56

Supercereal

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score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 20 '11 at 22:00

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This is most probably because the i7 870 has hyperthreading (~2 hardware threads by core), my Core i5 760 shows only 4. For each processor core that is physically present, the operating system addresses two virtual processors

answered Jan 20 '11 at 22:00

Michel

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score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 20 '11 at 21:56

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Looks like the applications are detecting what is called Hyperthreading. This feature effectively allows a single core to behave as two cores. See the wikipedia article if you want to know more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading

answered Jan 20 '11 at 21:56

Blackbeagle

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Why do all the Windows Desktop Gadgets tell me my 4 core processor has 8 cores?

4 Answers4