Multi-core effectively means more than one CPU on the same chip so when you buy a dual-core processor you’re actually buying two CPU cores, Windows will see two CPUs, and you should treat it for capacity planning purposes like two single-core CPUs.
It gets even better from a licensing perspective because Microsoft per-processor licensing is per socket, not per core. Socket refers to the physical socket that you plug the processor into.
This licensing model gives Microsoft a competitive advantage over its competitors in the database market, where others charge customers a license fee per core. This is great news for SQL Server customers because a server with four dual-core CPUs will perform comparably with an eight single-core server but at half the license cost.
Image from book
Multi-core processors are only licensed per socket so if you can get an 8-core processor you’ll only need a Windows and SQL Server license for 1 socket!
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