Reddit mentions of But How Do It Know? - The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone

But How Do It Know? is a great introduction into how computers work.

Hyperthreading is also a way to utilize each core more effectively. Not all programs can run as many instructions simultaneously like emulators can, so hyperthreading is there to let you use two different threads on one core. It goes without saying that its not as effective as having more cores, but it helps a lot for mid range laptops doing typical user workloads.

State switching is also a feature that helps with typical workloads. The processor change (grossly simplified) to higher performance and lower performance and everything in between quicker and more effectively. So when games suddenly give the CPU more tasks to do, the CPU will be quicker to adjust and give the necessary "power". This improves times for things like wake from sleep, opening programs, much more, and reduces power usage and heat build up.

There are also a large amount of minor things like branch prediction and things we don't hear about as much (industry trade secrets), that does add up to very tangible improvements. In addition to me not knowing so much about them, many of them are by nature secretive since Intel has much competition.

My reason for writing just a few words about these things was that so you can understand that there is a plethora of ways CPU's can improve. And they do. And it might be impossible to get the typical consumer to do more than compare clockspeed (just get them to factor in core count is hard). In short, the topic is much less simple than it looks at first glance.

If you want to learn more about processors, start learning about a simple one can help a huge amount. A guy called J.C. Scott designed a fully working theoretical 8-bit CPU architecture similar to actual 8-bit CPU's just so he could in detail explain to people how CPU's "know" stuff. He starts off by showing you how you can build logic gates using transistors, then how you can build all of the components out of logic gates. And the book is very easy to follow. amazon link

This is the joke behind the title of this book about how computers work!

This book :

https://www.amazon.com/But-How-Know-Principles-Computers-ebook/dp/B00F25LEVC

is a great point to start. I remember two semesters before computer architecture course, I read this. This book opened my eye to the "Digital Electronics" world and I learned a lot. I Highly recommend that.