[SOLVED] How do threads and cores work to multitask?

[Bruno Vincent]

Here are various workflow situations, what helps to work faster for these, cores or threads?

I know this is a very big question...but I'll attempt to get an easy answer anyways 😉

System is i5-8400, 6 cores , 6 threads, plenty of RAM, so not a decisive parameter

1. 6 Google chrome tabs open at the same time

Would that run a core or a thread per tab?

2. 6 programs open:
-Notepad
-Chrome
-Adobe Illustrator
-Firefox
-MS Excell
-Oracle Virtual Box

Would that run 6 cores, 6 threads? One for each program?

Trying to determine this because thinking of upgrading to a CPU, but not sure to seek more cores or more threads, this is ONLY for productivity, NO gaming whatsoever 😉

 

[rgd1101]

chrome is multi threads application, each tab is it only threads

unless you are running threads heavy app. don't make much different

read core is better then HT

 

[kanewolf]

A browser tab open may not use any CPU resources. It would depend on the content. I could have 1000 tabs of a static page open and no CPU resources required.
Same thing with applications. Notepad is probably not using any CPU resources because it is waing on YOU to type something. Excel, probably the same. Illustrator, probably the same. If an application is active, it might have dozens of active threads. Some for disk I/O some for user input, some for calculation. There is not a 1 to 1 correspondence between applications and threads for most commercial software.