So i have a dual core that isnt strong enough to run dolphin on most games, it has 2 physical 4 logical cores. I ran dolphin and looked at my system monitor and each logical core is running about 50% while dolphin lags. Why inst it running full 100%? i dont think the graphics card is holding it up any (intel HD 520) set to native resolution. I running linux with an i5-6200u. Not trying to get it to run just curios why it is only using 50%
Dolphin can only really run on two logical cores at a time. However, the operating system frequently makes Dolphin switch between different logical cores, so even though it can't run on more than two logical cores at the same time, it will on average look as if it's running at 50% load on all four cores. But if you look at each logical core closely, it's doing 100% (or close to it) for a short while, then 0% for a short while, then 100% for a short while again, and so on.
So wouldn't i rather not have hyper threading in that case? if i were to build a desktop to run dolphin i mean.
4 physical cores would be better in some circumstances. There is a limit to the amount of processing each physical core can do and each thread can use that capacity. In practice this is not usually the case since it is highly unlikely that something is using all of a CPU core all of the time.
Hyperthreading on a 4 or higher core count CPU will not matter at all assuming that the scheduler is doing it's job properly and assigning CPU tasks based on available reasources properly.
Windows should really show UNIX-style load numbers, it would make whats happening in cases like this clearer.