After countless programs to test CPU verse real and hyper threads on my i7, All EIGHT cores on WIN7 x64 are real and contribute evenly to speed of a single application asking for 8 ore more threads (not the tread pool). Excessive locking (kernal time) will slow the hyperthreadsto about 10% with the real threads at 90-100%.
A second note, I'm not sure what program you were using to test the cpu, but if it was a .net program using the thread pool, it will only ever get 50% of the total load at that time, due to thread fairness in win7 with .net 4.
