How many cores!!

simnix

Hi,

 

I just want to clear up a confution I have. I bought a new Aspire V5-571P laptop (Which I love by the way). When I bought it from PCWorld UK they had it displayed as and told me it was a dual core. When I look in Device Manager it shows it as four processors. My questions are: 1 what is the difference between core and processor, 2 does my laptop have a quad core?

 

Thank

Simnix

Too51oll

2 physical cores with Hyperthreading, the two cores can handle up to four threads in parallel leading to better utilization of the CPU.

 

Hyper-Threading
Intel Hyper-Threading uses multi-threading technology to make a processor appear to have more cores than it physically has to the operating system and applications. Hyper-Threading technology is used to increase performance at multi-threaded tasks. The simplest multi-threaded situation is a multi-tasking user running several programs simultaneously, but there are other tasks that take advantage of Hyper-Threading like multimedia operations (like transcoding, rendering, etc.) and Web surfing (loading different elements like Flash content and images simultaneously).

The quick explanation is that all Core i7 CPUs use Hyper-Threading, so a six-core CPU can handle 12 streams, a four core handles eight streams, and a dual-core handles four streams. Core i5 uses Hyper-Threading to make a dual-core CPU act like a four-core one, but if you have a Core i5 processor with four true cores, it won't have Hyper-Threading. For the time being, Core i5 tops out at handling 4 streams, using four real cores or two cores with Hyper-Threading.

 

Too51oll

2 physical cores with Hyperthreading, the two cores can handle up to four threads in parallel leading to better utilization of the CPU.

 

Hyper-Threading
Intel Hyper-Threading uses multi-threading technology to make a processor appear to have more cores than it physically has to the operating system and applications. Hyper-Threading technology is used to increase performance at multi-threaded tasks. The simplest multi-threaded situation is a multi-tasking user running several programs simultaneously, but there are other tasks that take advantage of Hyper-Threading like multimedia operations (like transcoding, rendering, etc.) and Web surfing (loading different elements like Flash content and images simultaneously).

The quick explanation is that all Core i7 CPUs use Hyper-Threading, so a six-core CPU can handle 12 streams, a four core handles eight streams, and a dual-core handles four streams. Core i5 uses Hyper-Threading to make a dual-core CPU act like a four-core one, but if you have a Core i5 processor with four true cores, it won't have Hyper-Threading. For the time being, Core i5 tops out at handling 4 streams, using four real cores or two cores with Hyper-Threading.