Hi,
I have an intel i3-370M cpu in my laptop, these cpu's only have 2 cores according to intel but boinc manager thinks I have 4 cores. It also seems to have got the number of threads wrong as well. Is there anything I can do to change this?

intel i3-370M spec

Events log from boinc manager:

14/05/2012 11:38:06 | | Benchmark results:
14/05/2012 11:38:06 | | Number of CPUs: 4
14/05/2012 11:38:06 | | 2139 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
14/05/2012 11:38:06 | | 6558 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
14/05/2012 11:38:07 | | Resuming computation

Thanks

Forgot to mention

BOINC client version 7.0.25 for windows_x86_64

Windows 7

Your CPU does hyper-threading, meaning that for each real core the CPU makes a virtual core. So you have 2 real + 2 virtual = 4 cores.

You'll see that Windows will state as well that you have 4 cores, when you check Task Manager->Performance.

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If you look at the full Intel data sheet, you will see that the same statement is repeated there:

# of Cores 2
# of Threads 4

It's a technique known as 'hyperthreading', and it's designed to work that way: although each individual task is completed more slowly when hyperthreading is active, the machine as a whole is more productive because four tasks are being completed in not much more time than two would otherwise take.

If you feel that four tasks at a time are too many, or make your laptop too hot, you can ask BOINC not to use all the available threads. On the 'computing preferences' page of any one of your attached projects, set

On multiprocessors, use at most: 50% of the processors
Enforced by version 6.1+

Thanks