Is it true that AMD A8 7600 only has 2 cores?

[jedseno]

I'm really wondering why CPU-Z says that this processor only has two cores. I've searched around the web and they say that this APU should have 4 cores. Am I missing something?

 

[photonboy]

It has two MODULES with two cores in each.

The cores however aren't quite complete so they share buffers etc in the same module which is part of the problem with performance vs a true quad-core CPU where each cores has its own buffers/registers.

People seem to disagree on the terminology so I'll just call this:

two modules of two cores, or
four cores/threads

It might be best to just call them THREADS. Anyway, if you go into Task Manager, CPU... and change to show all graphs you'll see four graphs so there's four current threads of code that can be run at any time. One per "core".

Intel has dual-core CPU's that do something a little different. It's called hyperthreading. They take the times the core is waiting and have another thread of data ready to feed it. It can add up to around 30% or so performance but it depends on many factors.

So we have a MODULE approach, a HYPERTHREADED approach and a "true core" approach.

The module approach should disappear; it was an effort to save money but the performance wasn't there. AMD's next 8-core Zen CPU is likely an 8C/16T CPU which means each core is hyperthreaded as discussed above.