Understanding the wmic cpu/os output

Question

I have 2 questions -

1. I have several computers on my network. When I use "wmic cpu" some of them return single line data output and others two identical lines. Does it (necessarly) mean those computers have a single or double physical processors?

2. When calculating memory "loadage" of a computer, which parameters should I use - "Physicalmemory" or "VirtualMemory"?

Answer 1

If you get two identical lines (sounds like you are using some more parameters with wmic CPU Get... ) then you have two CPUs.

Use the following to see if the two entries have different DeviceIDs.

wmic cpu Get DeviceID

If you get something like

CPU0
CPU1

then you have two CPUs installed.

Answer 2

Since we don't know what hardware you have and operating system we will have to make assumptions. Generally you can get several results back due to having multiple cores. Each core can sometimes look like a separate processor.

If I do

Get-WmiObject Win32_Processor | select NumberOfLogicalProcessors

I get 4 processors back

NumberOfLogicalProcessors
-------------------------
                        4

Yet if I type

@(Get-WmiObject Win32_Processor).count

I get back

1

So it all depends on where and what you are looking for.

And for your memory question, again it depends on what you are looking for. Physical memory is how much RAM is being used. Virtual memory will be how much you are paging.