So all these year's i've been living a lie? I thought my current i7 laptop has 4 cores but according to a lot of articles are saying mobile chips only have 2 cores?

Why does Windows always say it has 4 though?

you tell us Billy 😉

What's the model?
Go into system information (WIN + R -> 'msinfo32')

Could it be this one?
https://ark.intel.com/products/...-
It has 4 cores if so.

Not all mobile chips are the same, not entirely sure what you mean there.

@qwerty77asdf https://tinygreenpc.com/blog/...

Windows probably shows it correct and the article probably didn't say that all mobile i7's are dual cores, though some are.

QM is a quad core.

@billgates model Core™ i7-2670QM is true 4 core CPU.

@billgates the link you added has a different processor. Your one (i7-2670QM) has 4 cores.

https://ark.intel.com/products/...-

The one in that article (i7-7500U) has 2 cores.

https://ark.intel.com/products/...-

r-click that graph
show graph per thread
see it all working

I believe it has 2 real cores but 4 virtual cores. I think that was how cpus were designed at least, basically they seperate the physical core into more virtual cores

@Marnsghol double that. The taskmngr screenshot explicitly states 4c/8t

@qwerty77asdf i3 i5 i7 so confusing... Never understood it when they first came out. For some reason I always remembered it as 1, 2, 4 cores

Threads / vcores

@theKarlisK nope. States logical processors on there roo. That's HT.

@billgates i3, i5, and i7 are just meaningless brand names. You have to research what you are buying before you do.

@electrineer apparently... When it first came out that's what it meant

I've had this weird thing with my old laptop.

When I bought it, the box said dual core.
Booted to windows first time, windows said dual core.

Installed Linux (elementary I think), it suddenly said quad core...

Looked the specs up online: quad core!

Articles without citations can be treated as lies. Why don't you search that particular model on Intel website?

@Gaveuxifort I was looking for the general difference between i*. This was just one article returned from "what is the difference between mobile and desktop" even the first result I think by PCWorld said mobile chips are all dual core.

The processors with a U on the end are common in small laptops and Ultrabooks (U sort of means ultra-low power draw) and until 8th gen were only dual core. I assume your laptop is pretty beefy and has a bigger battery and more cooling so it can handle a quad core.

@spongessuck my laptop is more than 4yrs old. Chromebooks didn't exist back then maybe that's why... same names, new classifications

@billgates

i* desktop cpus are optimised for performances, common mobile chips U and m are optimised for battery consumptions, old architecture you'll see Q or HQ series basically former is quad-core, latter is just with optimised graphics on top of Q. But nowadays even i5s are in quad-core 8 threads, so you don't see HQ anymore but simply H.

Here a rule
For 7th gen and earlier processors
If model name end with
U - 2 cores 4 thread
HQ and K- 4 cores 8 thread
For 8th gen
U - 4 cores 8 thread
HQ and K- 6 cores 12 thread

I can bet you can find i5 that is better than i7...

@Gregozor2121

In single thread yes