8 Cores 4 Threads?

[Visseroth]

I'm just setting up OPNSense for the first time. I figured why not, I need to get away from PfSense, so why not start migrating slowly. A friend of mine needed his firewall setup (long story short), so I figured why not use him as a guine pig, plus PfS***e is getting a bit buggy. I've had interface and Unbound issues.
Anyhow, I just noticed the CPU, being a i7-6700 is showing as a 8 core CPU with 4 threads. This seems backwards. Shouldn't it be 4 core 8 threads?
That is what Intel lists it as...
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/88196/intel-core-i76700-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-00-ghz/specifications.html

[franco]

Hi,

Thanks for checking out OPNsense. :)

I assume you run 24.7 unpatched? At the moment there is 24.7.4 and the particular case of the widget display was fixed.


Cheers,
Franco

[hoondi]

Hi Visseroth,
I've been seeking advice from our Networks team for my homelab ventures.


They advised me that when using a PC as a router, it's not a bad idea to disable a few things to keep the PC as stable as possible.
eg:  threads, all S sleep/standby states and any applicable CPU boosting of clock speeds for example.
RAM timing can also be set Jedec instead of XMP too.


It's for these reasons I went with an I5 that has 4 cores and 4 threads only, and I keep it at base clock speeds.


You want your router to be as stable/consistent as possible at all times if you can.