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When I go to the task manager I see 8 processors but I know that I have 4. Why?

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+1, Show off :P – William Hilsum Jan 14 '10 at 23:26
I can show a screenshot of a 16-thread box if you like? ;) – Farseeker Jan 14 '10 at 23:36
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migrated from serverfault.com Jan 14 '10 at 23:24

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3 Answers

up vote 18 down vote accepted

Hyperthreading.

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Thank you for the link +1 – Daok Jan 14 '10 at 22:30
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up vote 7 down vote

That my friend is hyper-threading.

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"Beauty" is debatable. In some cases hyperthreading destroys performance. – MDMarra Jan 14 '10 at 22:11
It all depends on what you're doing – prestomation Jan 14 '10 at 22:24
You guys happy now? :D (Wasn't trying to elicit a troll war or anything) – wayoutmind Jan 14 '10 at 22:28
Thank you for your answer +1 – Daok Jan 14 '10 at 22:29
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"That, my friend, is hyper-threading in all it's beauty!" :) – Molly7244 Jan 14 '10 at 23:36
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up vote 3 down vote

The i7 family is a Quad core processor that has 8 threads. Normal quad cores have 4 threads, and since hyper-threading is enabled you computer recognizes those 8 threads as processors..

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