i7 CPU Cores Parked... What the heck?

[Sinc747]

New i7 2600K system. Trying to break VidBlaster and make the system bog down. Running simultaneaous videos, chromakey, instant reply, everything I could think of to slow down the system. Went to Task Manager and checked CPU usage (since it shows each core), then to Resource Monitor for a better view. I was surprised to find that some of the cores are "parked" with no activity whatsoever?

What the heck is this? Why? And how do I get rid of it?

[micman]

Isn't that good? It was my understanding that this meant you have some more capacity available.

[weconverse]

Well, I noticed some similar things today. I have an i7 with 6 cores. Sometimes, for example, one thread is pretty steady at 80%, 2-3 at 0% and the remaining 10-20% while the average is "32%". The latter is of course like any other statistics not perfect, but one might think there is plenty of power left (but maybe the most critical thread is close to burning up, figuratevly).

I guess it is not as easy as "whoops, one is at 80, let's split it to two, 40% each". But having 20% of the threads unused, means...4 cores with multi threading is sufficient?