Fixadent :
geofelt :
They are equally fast.
Windows dispatches threads, not physical cores.
A hyperthread will use residual cycles not used by an already dispatched thread.
That is managed by the cpu.
So a 4-core hyperthreaded CPU will be as fast as an 8-core non-hyperthreaded CPU?
No.
Assuming you actually had a non hyperthreaded 8 core cpu(I know of none) you would not have the same total capability. FX-8xxx processors share some resources also, so they are like 4 core processors which have a largish number of duplicated resources, (but not all.)
Hyperthreads use residual resources not being used by the first threads. Not all resources are duplicated.
If they were, you would have a true 8 core cpu.
Resources that are not duplicated are those which are not generally used all the time.