CPU Usage, Cores, and Other Information
There’s a really easy way to see what your CPU is doing in Windows 10
- Press Start
- Type ‘Task Manager’ and select the App to launch it.
- If you see ‘More Details’ in the bottom left, click it. If you see ‘Fewer Details’, skip this step.
- Click on the ‘Performance’ tab.
- Click ‘CPU’ in the left options.
- The Base speed, Sockets, Cores, and Logical Processors will be listed.
Applies To: Windows 10
Windows 10’s Task Manager is hugely improved over older operating systems. You can see much more information about the components of your computer, including how long it’s been on for (the Up time):
If your computer feels like it’s running slow, it’s worth checking the CPU, Memory and Disks to see if they’re running high (90% or more), and then go into the details tab to work out what process is causing the high usage.
Windows Central have a great detailed guide on how to do this.
Just be sure NOT to count “logical processors” as cores – VMware make it easy to make this mistake as well. Although hyperthreading (Intel) and SMT (AMD) may appear to offer more cores, in reality not all instructions can be executed in parallel in this fashion, and the performance benefit is more like 1.3:1 rather than the 2:1 the “logical processors” number seems to indicate over cores.