APU A8 5500 Does it have 4 physical cores?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Z

zingy12

Honorable
Jul 15, 2013
39
0
10,530
My computer currently has an APU A8 5500, however, when looking through the task manager, I saw it only has 2 physical cores, and 4 logical processors. I always thought that the A8 was a true quad core, and I was just wondering if I was mistaken or not.

Thanks!
 
Solution
ingtar33


it has 4 integer cores so it is a quad core cpu. it has 2 core modules. it has 4 separate integer cores, and by every definition of a cpu core since the beginning of time, an integer core is a cpu core. It wasn't until the addition of floating point processing onto the cpu sometime around 2000 that we added floating point units to cpu cores... since cpus generally suck at floating point math (yes, even intel cpus suck at it) many programs borrow your gpu these days for this type of math (gpus are giant floating point calculators), the sharing of a floating point unit between...
Sort by date Sort by votes
ingtar33

ingtar33

Glorious
Dec 17, 2012
9,015
188
45,840
its a quad core

in the bulldozer archetecture, amd merged 2 cores into one core module... the 2 cores share some resources, mostly they share cache and 1 floating point processor... it's 2 cores by every metric except windows. Windows for some reason sees each core module as a single core rather then a 2 core unit.

yes it's a quad core cpu.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ingtar33

ingtar33

Glorious
Dec 17, 2012
9,015
188
45,840


it has 4 integer cores so it is a quad core cpu. it has 2 core modules. it has 4 separate integer cores, and by every definition of a cpu core since the beginning of time, an integer core is a cpu core. It wasn't until the addition of floating point processing onto the cpu sometime around 2000 that we added floating point units to cpu cores... since cpus generally suck at floating point math (yes, even intel cpus suck at it) many programs borrow your gpu these days for this type of math (gpus are giant floating point calculators), the sharing of a floating point unit between the two seperate integer cores forming the core module doesn't change the fact it's a quad core cpu.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
B

bigpinkdragon286

Splendid
Oct 3, 2012
4,648
35
28,590
My speculation as to why Windows is treating your processor as 2 physical and 4 logical is for the purposes of thread dispatch to each core. When possible, it is more practical to dispatch threads to each module first, then to the separate cores on those modules, as there is less contention for shared resources. By treating the Bulldozer style modules as you would Intel's Hyperthreading, you can eek out a slight bit more performance.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom