Processors

[thomascole]

I recently built a computer. I purchased a used board. Asus a88xm-plus with a A8 5600k APU. I built this system under the intentions that the APU had 4 cores. I wanted something more powerful than my Athlon dual core. Now that I have finished this build. I can see that it doesn't seem to be a quad core? Well it doesn't have 4 processing cores. Which I seem to be a little confused about? CPUID says I have 4 cores and 4 threads. The ASUS bios says it is a Dual core. Windows system resource monitor says 2 cores 4 threads.  Steam system info says 2 cores 4 threads. Everywhere on the Internet says it is a quad core.  Some even saying it has 4 cores. It still is a lot more powerful than my Athlon. I was just confused on this? Does it have 4 cores and I'm just not turning on\off something in bios?

[neon]

A8-5600K is built on the Bulldozer architecture. It contains 2 modules. Each module contains 2 integer execution units and 1 shared floating point unit. Thus, there are a total of 4 integer execution units and 2 floating point units. You have 4 cores that can work on 4 threads.

Prior architectures have a 1:1 ratio of execution units to floating point units, so some software detects only 2 floating point units, and declares that is a 2 core processor.

[thomascole]

Yes, I read this somewhere. That clarifies my confusion. I assumed it was but when the system is telling me different. I was a bit confused.  Thank you!