Popular Model Question

Hello.

Tell me how to find out exactly how many cores are in the processor on my laptop. It's just that when I bought it, they said that it was a dual-core processor, and when I opened the device manager, I saw that I had four cores. How so?

(BTW, Intel Core i3 processor)

Good day!

Indeed, there is often confusion with these kernels. But most of all, it "kills" that dishonest sellers often play this, selling a dual-core processor as a quad-core one (the thing is that in Intel processors (including in Intel Core i3, i5, i7) special is used. Hyper Threading (HT) technology).

Method 1: special utilities

One of the most accurate and reliable ways to find out information about your processor (without disassembling the computer) is to use the help of special. utilities: AIDA 64, CPU-Z, Speccy, etc. I note that if you (for a reasonable amount)- I highly recommend looking at the characteristics of the device just in such programs (Windows properties can be spoofed/edited relatively easily).

By the way, I have a separate article on my blog devoted to such utilities (see the link below).

To help! The best utilities for determining the characteristics of a computer -

For example, I like the CPU-Z program (since you only need to run it, you don’t even need to install it 👏). Pay attention to the screenshot below: in the main window of CPU-Z, you can immediately find out all the main characteristics of the processor (Cores are the cores, there are 2 of them behind my work laptop).

Identical information can be found in another fairly convenient utility - Speccy. You need to open a tab "CPU"(see screenshot below).

Method 2: using msinfo32

In Windows, you can find out a lot of information about your computer without extraneous utilities. (however, as mentioned above, they may not always be reliable *).

To open a window "System Information" : press a combination of buttons Win+R, enter the command msinfo32 and press OK. An example is below.

msinfo32 - CPU model / Clickable

Method 3: through the properties of Windows and official. products webpage

Method 4: Task Manager

Note! If your OS is Windows 7, then I do not recommend this method to you! The fact is that this OS does not distinguish between logical processors (or threads) and cores (or cores), as Windows 10 (8) does. So you can easily make a mistake...

To call the Task Manager, press the Ctrl+Shift+Esc (or Ctrl+Alt+Del) key combination. Then open the tab "Performance" - the number of cores will be shown at the bottom of the window (they are highlighted in red in the screenshot below).

Comment!

By the way, such a difference in the cores and logical processors of Intel creates a lot of confusion among users. (and even helps dishonest sellers pass off dual cores as quad cores).

And it's all about the special. Intel technology - Hyper Threading. I'll go over what that means in more detail below...

What does it mean: cores - 2, logical processors - 4

The number of cores and logical processors is taken as an example. In your case, it may be somewhat different, for example, cores - 4, logical processors - 8 ...

This means that the processor is dual-core (and not quad-core, as many believe). It's just that each core is "divided" into two virtual ones (they are called threads). This is a special technology from Intel - Hyper-Threading (by the way, not all Intel processor lines support it).

AMD processors have the same number of physical and logical cores. Therefore, there is no such confusion with them.

By default, Hyper Threading is usually enabled. (the parameter is set in BIOS/UEFI, often abbreviated as "HT", see screenshot below).

Thanks to this technology, the processor should work somewhat faster in streaming applications, for example, this is noticeable when encoding video (how do you increase the encoding speed to 15÷30%!?).

In general, the unit of gain from this technology depends on the application and its optimization. Some games do not receive any growth from it at all, while others - quite significantly! Many users simply do a test - turning this technology on / off and comparing the performance that was with and without it.

To help!

How to perform a stress test of the processor and the system as a whole, does it keep the frequencies, is there any overheating -

On this I am finishing my "educational program" ...

All the best!

In some cases, you will need to know how many cores the processor has. As a rule, when buying a new computer, you might think about checking the specifications declared by the manufacturer. If you prefer Windows 10, then you can use a few simple methods to check the number of cores.

In the era of modernization, when Intel is looking forward to the imminent release of new generations of Cannon Lake, Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake processors, it is much easier for the user to afford a computer with four cores. It's time to learn about the power of the processor you are using.

Before we start pointing out ways to detect the number of cores in the latest version of the system, it is important to collect information about what it is.

What is the core?

A computer includes a number of important components that are collectively referred to as hardware. Among them, the most important part is the processor (central processing unit). It is the first to receive information to perform a computational operation and contains a set of instructions. Now it's time to learn about the term "core".

On a note! If a processor has only one set of instructions, we call it single core.

Over time, Intel has made huge changes to processor instructions. As we said earlier, its name depends on their number. In the case of two sets of instructions, we call the processor dual core or Dual Core. Similarly, 4 sets are Quad Core, 6 sets are Hexa-Core. The last one is Octa-Core as it contains 8 instruction sets. Now we know what the cores are, so let's move on to checking their number in the CPU.

There are different methods for determining nuclei, and we will explore them in turn.

You can use:

• "Task Manager";
• system information;
• Google search;
• or third party software.

To clearly understand the whole process and avoid mistakes, we will discuss each method step by step.

Methods for Checking the Number of Cores in a CPU on Windows 10

Method 1: Using System Information

System Information is an alternative option that allows you to check the number of cores in the CPU without using additional software. For this reason, the steps are as follows:

Step 1. Click the Start button on your computer and type "details" in the search field. Select System Information.

Step 2 The right panel provides a list of items that describe each part of the PC. Slowly check them until you find the processor in the list. In any case, if you have two processors, you will see them separately. Take a close look at the value and look for the number of cores (see screenshot).

Method 2. Using the "Task Manager"

Among all the procedures for checking the number of cores in the CPU, the fastest is using the "Task Manager". Just follow the steps below.

Step 1. You can launch Task Manager in two ways:

Step 2. The Task Manager has several sections. Switch to the Performance tab. On the left sidebar, you will see graphical indicators for CPU, Memory, Ethernet, Disk 0, Disk 1, etc.

Step 3 Click on the "CPU" option and a graph with more information will open on the right side of the panel.

Step 4 A little lower you will notice the base speed indicators, sockets, cores, etc. So, look for the number next to the cores. For example, the number 2 is displayed in the bottom photo, which means that the PC has a Dual Core dual-core processor.

Typically, Task Manager only shows one chart, but you can change the way it is displayed. For this:

You will be happy to find that in Windows 10 there is no need to change the graph as it automatically reports the number of cores, sockets and logical processors present in the system.

On a note! In addition, "Task Manager" also provides information about caches like L1, L2 and L3. In some cases, the computer's CPU uses special caches to provide faster computational performance.

Method 3. Through Google search

A Google search will also only reveal the number of cores in a processor if you know the model number. In the absence of proper information, use the "Task Manager" or system information (see the methods described above).

For example, we googled core - i34005U. By checking the returned results, you will get information about the processor specification. It lists every detail in detail. Find the core and you will see your number.

Method 4: Third Party Applications

You can also use third-party programs to find out detailed information about the processor. Basically they are free. Along with processor details, the applications will also tell you about support for virtualization, SSSE3, etc. They are very efficient and equally useful when it comes to finding information about a device.

The Internet is full of collections of various tools for checking the motherboard, as well as processor parts. The two most popular programs are Speccy and HWiNFO. Both work very well and provide almost all hardware data.

Consider how to find out information about the processor using the Speccy program as an example:

The above simple ways will help you find out the number of cores in the processor. Plus, it won't take long.

On a note! It's good to know that Windows 10 32-bit supports up to 32 cores. If you select 64-bit, then the device can support up to 256 cores.

Video - How to set up the HWiNFO program

Output

When using a computer, you should understand its details at least superficially. This is really useful for determining device performance as well as for professional work. You should definitely know how many cores your processor has. It's good that Windows 10 makes searching easier. As a rule, we feel the need for simple data discovery methods. So, try using the above methods to check the number of cores in the CPU. It's good if you know more options.

Video - How to find out how many cores are on a computer

There are several ways to find out how many cores are in a laptop or personal computer processor. However, each individual method may not be suitable for all laptops, so try different ones and you will definitely get an answer to your question.

Universal ways

Using them, you can see how many cores are on the computer in any version of Windows.

"Task Manager"

The method is suitable for determining the number of physical cores and logical processes in Windows 7 and 8. For it, you must perform the following steps:

Sometimes the numbers are not displayed - just expand the window by clicking the "Maximize" button.

For the “seven”, the number of cores will be shown by the cells of the diagrams: if there are two of them, then the computer has two cores (Line “CPU load history”). Optional: you can get to the task manager in another way. You need to right-click on the taskbar and click on the line "Task Manager".

"Device Manager"

With this tool, you can see not so much the number of cores as their threading. The system often confuses these indicators on modern computer models. Here's how to see how many cores a computer has through Device Manager:

This method should be used by those who need to get the most detailed information.

“System Information” on Windows 7

How to see how many cores a computer has in Windows 7:

“Computer Information” on Windows 8

In the G8, you can get information about in another way.

Hello! Sooner or later, almost all users have a question - how to find out how many cores are in a computer? (and for a good kernel specifically in the processor) and what pitfalls are in this, at first glance, a fairly simple task. This note is a logical continuation of the instructions for the series of your PC or laptop.

Why did I decide to raise this issue? - I understand that there are quite detailed notes on the network about how to determine the number of processor cores, but almost all of them combined logical cores and real ones.

In fact, having pebble with two cores, you will think that you have full-fledged four cores and there will be a misunderstanding - why is a modern toy stupid? Performance is over the top...

Currently, the number of threads being processed can be greater than the number of physical cores. This allows you to use processor instructions that are not currently used by the kernel and, in theory, increase performance. Such a virtual core gives an incomparably smaller performance boost, but is defined in the system as a logical processor. This note was written to help you deal with these nuances.

It so happened that to find out the number of available threads in the system is almost 100500 ways. As soon as it comes to physical cores, the number of options is seriously reduced (and most authors pass off these same logical cores as physical ones, which is a gross mistake).

I decided to divide the note into two small blocks - in the first we will determine the number of cores using standard Windows tools, and in the second we will try various utilities that will answer our questions.

How to determine how many cores are in a processor using standard Windows tools

Standard tools have a huge advantage - they are already installed in the system and can be used immediately. However, most of the tools built into the system tell us about the number of threads, which in some cases can distort our idea of ​​the number of cores in the processor (in the presence of Hyper Threading from Intel or SMT from AMD)

Method 1: Task Manager

One of the easiest ways to determine the number of physical processor cores is to launch the task manager (this is done by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + ESC), go to the “Performance” tab, select “CPU” on the left side and look at the number of cores as in the picture below (logical processors are those threads)

Unfortunately, such a task manager has been present since Windows 8, and in the seven familiar to many, it will not work in this way, we will only see threads there

Method 2: System Information

This method works on all versions of Windows (unfortunately I can’t check on Windows XP, and who uses it in 2k17). Windows has a tool called System Information. It displays detailed information about our computer, including helping to find out the number of physical cores in the processor. To run it, open the "Run" command (the easiest way is to use the WIN + R keyboard shortcut) and type the command ...

…click OK and wait for the window to load.

Everything is extremely simple here, the number of cores and threads will be written in the “Processor” line, as well as a lot of other useful information.

Although standard methods allow you to determine how many cores are in the processor, they provide too little information for a sophisticated user - there are specialized applications especially for them.

How to see how many cores are on a computer with third-party utilities

If you want to squeeze out the maximum information about your processor, then there are specialized utilities for this (if you still do not know which processor you have in your system, then be sure to read). It is these programs that we will now consider ...

Method 1. CPU-Z

CPU-Z is by far the best when it comes to viewing CPU specs. I prefer the portable version that doesn't require installation - download and use. You can download it on the official website:

After launch, the number of processor cores can be viewed on the "CPU" tab in the "Cores" line (and Threads is the number of threads)

In most cases, the number of cores coincides with the number of threads, virtual cores are usually the lot of the most expensive solutions (but there are exceptions)

Method 2. HWiNFO

The following utility helped us and accurately displayed, without any problems it will determine the number of cores and threads in the system. HWiNFO has several editions (32 and 64 bit versions), you need to download for the bitness of your operating system, the link to the download page is as always below (if you have doubts about the bitness of the system, download HWiNFO32 - it will start everywhere)

I recommend using the portable version. Well, after launching, the “System Summary” window will open for us, where next to the name of the processor you will see the number of physical and logical processors (Cores and Logical, respectively)

In general, the HWiNFO application provides information not only about cores and threads, but also shows a quite visual report on giblets your computer

Method 3. AIDA64

The next program that will help you find out how many cores a processor has is AIDA64 (the former Everest, otherwise they often ask me why I never include it in my list). The product is commercial, but there is a trial period - you can download it from the official website (we are interested in the Extreme version)

By the way, there is also a portable version. We launch the application, on the left side we go to "Computer", "Summary Information", and on the right side in the "Motherboard" block in the "CPU Type" line in the example it says QuadCore - this means that I have a processor with four cores in the system. In general, if English is stressful, you can always use an online translator.

AIDA64 is probably one of the most inconvenient applications for determining the number of cores on a computer, but such a monster simply could not be excluded from this top

Method 4. Piriform Speccy

In conclusion, I want to tell you about the utility from the developers of the legendary Ccleaner - this is, as many have guessed, Piriform Speccy. The purpose of this appendix is ​​to tell you as much as possible about each component of your system (including the number of cores and processor threads). The utility has a free version and you can download it from the official website.

We launch the application and on the left side we find the item "Central Processing Unit" - information about our CPU will open. In the kernel line, we will see the number of processor cores (just below information about threads)

Piriform Speccy is probably one of the best applications for collecting information about the computer, but the lack of a portable version saddens me a little.

Conclusions about all the ways to find out how many cores are on a pc

Well friends, it's time to round off and take stock. After reading this note, you know how to find out how many cores are in a computer ... however, there is another easy way - if you know your processor model, you can find information about it on the official website. Since there will be information about the number of cores and threads in the system.

The processor handles all the tasks on the computer, responsible for the performance of the system. Important parameters when choosing it are the clock speed and the number of cores. But an increase in the second value does not always cause a proportional increase in performance. Let's figure out how to find out how many cores are in the processor of a computer or phone, and what this parameter affects.

The core is the part of the microprocessor that executes a single instruction stream. The more such parts, the more tasks the PC solves per unit of time. Multi-core processors are faster at transcoding video, archiving files, and playing games. But this only works for applications that support multi-core and can parallelize a task into several threads - otherwise only one core will work. And then a processor with fewer cores, but with a higher frequency, will be faster.

What affects the number of cores in your phone: in mobile gadgets, you can notice the work of the processor in complex games or graphics processing applications. Keep in mind that the increase in cores is considered negatively affecting energy efficiency - you will have to charge a multi-core smartphone much more often.

Determined on the computer

To determine how many cores a processor has, you can use the built-in Windows tools or third-party programs.

To open the "Task Manager", right-click on "Start" or hold down Ctrl + Alt + del and select the item of the same name in the list. Go to the "Performance" tab, if it is not visible - expand the window by clicking on "More ...". In the left list, select "CPU", below the load graph, the main characteristics of the processor, including the number of cores, will be displayed.

In Windows 7, the appearance of the window is slightly different - there is no enumeration of parameters, instead of one graph - several, according to the number of cores. Therefore, recalculate the diagrams to find out the desired value.

Computer Properties

Right-click on the "My Computer" icon and open the "Properties" sub-item. You will see basic information about the PC, including processor specifications. In Intel models, the desired number is usually written in words, where Dual-core corresponds to a 2-core CPU, Quad - to a 4-core CPU.

This method does not work on all motherboards, sometimes you will only see the name and frequency of the processor.

From the previous "Properties" dialog, launch "Device Manager" from the left menu. It can also be opened by clicking on the "Start" by selecting the item of the same name in the context menu. In the list of devices, find "Processors" and expand this item. A list will appear, where the number of lines is the number of possible threads.

This method may give erroneous information if Hyper-threading technology is built into the processor. It allows you to divide one physical core into two independent threads. The dispatcher displays exactly the number of threads, and the cores can physically be 2 times less.

For extended system information, see the System Information utility. You can open it through a search in the "Start" or among the programs in the "Administrative Tools" folder. You will see the desired value in the "Processor" item.

Third Party Programs

More complete information is given by third-party applications for PC diagnostics. One of them is CPU-Z, which is small and free. How to find out in CPU-Z how many cores are on a laptop: run the utility, on the first “CPU” tab, look for the “Cores” field below - it contains the desired value.

Another similar utility is Speccy. In it, click on the "Central Processing Unit" on the left, all information on the CPU will be displayed on the right.

We determine on a smartphone

Additional applications will help to see the number of cores in the phone, most often they use the same CPU-Z. After installation, open the first tab "Soc" and look at the line "Cores" - the desired parameter is shown there.

You can find out how many cores an iPhone has by looking at the characteristics of the model on the Internet - iPhone versions are much smaller than Android devices. Do not be afraid that the quantity will be small - Apple takes not quantity, but quality. iPhone processors traditionally turn out to be faster than more multi-core competitors in business. On iPhone 4 and earlier models, there is only 1-core, from 4S to 6S - 2, and only 7 and 7 Plus received 4-core CPUs.

Conclusion

We figured out how you can find out the number of cores in a smartphone or PC processor. In Windows, it’s easier to always go into one of the system utilities, but if you have additional diagnostic applications installed, use them. You will also need to download a special utility to your smartphone, and iPhone owners can quickly find the characteristics of their model on the Internet.