i5-4570 on windows 7 professional, 64

[deathtokoalas]

with the death of windows 7 today, i am building a final iso for an air gapped computer that i use as a bedside typewriter and general use processing machine. my main recording pc actually still uses an airgapped xp, so this is somewhat of an upgrade. i recently replaced a broken hp laptop from 2013 with a second-hand business class lenovo, which purportedly has an i5-4570 with 8 gb of ram in it. the bios tells me it's an i5-4570. windows tells me it's an i5-4570, and presents 4 cores in the task manager. i have had win 7 pro on this machine since i purchased it a few months ago, but i sat down to determine if that's really the best choice to build a final iso with or not. do i really want pro on this machine, or should i build a home image instead?

one of the glaring differences between home and pro is the number of processors supported. pro supports two physical processors, whereas home supports one. therefore, i want...

wait.

all information i can find says the i5-4570 has four physical cpus in it. if windows 7 pro only supports two physical cpus, why is this cpu with 4 physical processors in it showing up as  a quadcore? should an i5-4570 not be read by windows 7 as a dual core, because it has 4 physical cpus, each on a single thread? or is my information about the i5-4570 incorrect, and does it actually have 2 physical cpus, each with 2 cores?

if i happened to be sold something with inaccurate information, the person that sold it to me has programmed the board to lie to me. i have flashed the bios using the lenovo tool. is there an intel tool that can get through a hacked bios, like that?

[deathtokoalas]

ok. i think the answer to this is confusing language.

microsoft's documentation claims that home supports 1 physical cpu (with however many threads on the cpu), whereas pro supports 2 physical cpus. this processor by intel has 4 physical cpus, each limited to one thread. this processor cannot hyperthread, but it has 4 powerful cores. it's a little older now, so it's less powerful than the newest processors, but what a processor like this can do remains remarkable. read literally, that would mean that the versions of windows 7 should only be able to read one or two of the 4 cpus, and i would need to use a different os to read all 4 cpus. a processor more appropriate for a windows 7 pro install would be an i3, which is a quad core with two physical cpus.

the microsoft documentation would seem to be misleading. microsoft means to say "socket", where it says "cpu".

[deathtokoalas]

pro is still a better choice due to the 16 gb ram block on home, given the board can take 32 gb of ram.

[AlHill]

I do not know how you developed this much flawed knowledge.

The difference between pro and home is, mostly, the support for domains.

And, your processor has 4 cores.  All are available on home and pro.  And, whatever amount of memory supported by your board is available to both home and pro.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/75043/intel-core-i54570-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz.html

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Maybe Windows 12 will be better]

[deathtokoalas]

as stated, the windows 7 documentation clearly states that home supports 1 physical cpu and pro supports 2 physical cpus. my processor has 4 physical cpus, and does not support hyperthreading. i have, to this point, not had a processor with more than 2 physical cpus, so determining whether windows 7 can read a processor with more than two cpus has not come up yet. the fact is that the windows 7 documentation uses imprecise language; it means to say that pro can support a board with two sockets (two chips), while home can only support one.

the windows 7 documentation is also clear that windows 7 home premium has a 16 gb maximum ram ceiling, whereas windows 7 pro can accept 192 gb. my board can take 32 gb of ram, and while i may never get there, i am likely to expand it past 16 relatively soon.

i was a support agent on the windows vista rollout and have direct training from microsoft. i would appreciate it if you would refrain from responding to my posts until you educate yourself enough to know what you're talking about.

[AlHill]

None of this matters.

I provided you an actual link to the processor in question. 

Your question has been answered.  And, the processor is discontinued and not supported, just like WIndows 7.

Doc (not an Intel employee or contractor)
[Maybe Windows 12 will be better]

[deathtokoalas]

could our superuser explain the difference between a physical core and a logical core, please?