How can I tell if WinXP is detecting both E6600 C2D cores?

Ohh a question I may be able to answer..... I'm new to all this too....

but I can help here

If you open task manager, and on the performance tab, under CPU Usage History, can you see 2 graphs side by side, seperated by a bar ?

If you can that means it can see and recognise both cores.... as there is a graph for each core.....

you can see them working if you run Prime95 with affinity activated, so your using both cores

...I feel the same way even though I've been bldg systems for over 15yrs. But this C2D stuff & AMD X2's are kicking my butt for being away from it all for over 3yrs...

Anyhow back to the real topic here, I do see the two graphs, but like I said in the original post it's identical to my old system which is right next to me. My old system is the P4 2.8GHZ Prescott which is a socket 478, single-core CPU.

PRIME95??? O-oh something new again. What's the latest version? Is it 24.14? Got a link for the latest Download?

Big Thanks.

Think you misunderstood. There are two graphs on the performance screen: Cpu Usage and Pagefile Usage, one atop the other. To their right is their history plots. When dual core is recognized by windows, the CPU usage history will be split in half by a vertical bar.

Sorry, don't know how to enable the E6600. Drivers maybe? Like AMD?

if on your old system you saw two graphs in the cpu usage history I think (but am not 100% positive) that your old p4 2.8 had hyperthreading which made windows think there was a second core when there was really only one. This would appear the same as having a dual core. Another way to verify would be to run cpuz and it'll tell you all the details on your cpu.

It's single core with HT, which creates a virtual second core by stuffing more data into the pipeline before the rest of it goes through. Interesting concept, but anyway, yeah it will look the same. As long as you have 2 graphs, it sees two of them.

Your old system has hyperthreading enabled. XP treats this as 2cpus. Check your device manager. You will see 2 cpus.

It should look like this for dual core (none hyper threading) cpu.



As for the Prime95, you can download it here:

http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4363

Thanks to Chuckshissle, ColdNeutron, djkrypplephite, mapex & MCGTech for clarifying this for me. Tanx guys.

Another way is through the device manager. Right-click on your My Computer icon and select properties. On the Hardware tab click the Device Manager button and look under Processors. It should show up twice to signify that the processor has 2 cores.

Yep, I did it earlier, but thanks 4 pointing it out. It does list two cores.
I dunno why my system is as slow as my P4 2.8ghz, which is why I was wondering whether my system was detecting the two cores or not.
I noticed that my system became about 50% slow while booting up from 1.5 mins. to about 3 mins. after the last batch of patches & updates Microsofty sent out between the last two weeks of September & this second week of October.
I've got 2GB RAM & when my system first comes up witout me doing anything it's using 620MB RAM, the largest Mem hogs are firefox @ 56MB & Spyware Doctor @ 54MB & Yahoo Msnger @ 46MB RAM. Then Mcafee 2006 8-in-1, ATI Catalyst v6.9 & then come all the windows services.... Sheeesh!!!!

I think I'll need 9.5 cores if this keeps up with about 96GB RAM.