Win32_Processor.Name versus Win32_Processor.Family

[David Holcomb]

I see some inconsistencies between Win32_Processor.Name and
Win32_Processor.Family, and I would like to understand if this behavior is
intentional or a bug in WMI.

* I have a machine at home where Win32_Processor.Name is reported as "AMD
Athlon(TM) XP 1900+" but the Win32_Processor.Family is reported as a value
of 29, which is supposed to be "AMD Duron". I thought in this case the
processor family would return value 28 for "AMD Athlon". I realize there
may be something in the relationship between these two processors I simply
don't understand, so I ask - is this the correct behavior? Is it a bug or
by design? I wonder if, possibly, the two values are backwards in the MSDN
documentation...

* Here at work I have a Pentium-4 where Processor.Name gets returned as
"Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz", but the Win32_Processor.Family comes
back with a value of 2, or "Unknown". Is there supposed to be a processor
family which maps to the newer Pentium-4 processor? According to the MSDN
docs, a value of 178 is supposed to be Pentium 4. Is it a bug or by design
that the processor family is returned as "Unknown" ? This particular CPU is
a Xeon.

Here is a snippet of the code:

szComputerName = "."
set WMIService_CIMV2 =
GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & szComputerName &
"\root\cimv2")

set ProcessorSet = WMIService_CIMV2.ExecQuery ("select * from
Win32_Processor")
for each Processor in ProcessorSet
Name = LTrim(Processor.Name)
if (Right(Name, Len(" processor")) = " processor") then Name =
Left(Name, Len(Name) - Len(" processor"))
Family = Processor.Family
WScript.Echo Processor.Name
WScript.Echo Processor.Family
next

set ProcessorSet = Nothing
set WMIService_CIMV2 = Nothing

Thanks,
David Holcomb

 

[Torgeir Bakken \(MVP\)]

I see some inconsistencies between Win32_Processor.Name and
Win32_Processor.Family, and I would like to understand if
this behavior is intentional or a bug in WMI.

Hi

It looks like the Win32_Processor.Family property is not to be trusted,
it does not return correct numbers in many cases (even for old
processor families known when Win2k or WinXP was released).

Some threads about this and some code that uses
Win32_Processor.Description instead to detect CPU family:

http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=eqb384zLCHA.2108@tkmsftngp11

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=uJnsfUIMCHA.2088@tkmsftngp11


For an up-to-date Intel Processor Identification listing that script
examples above uses, take a look here:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=#[email protected]



Alternatively, use PSInfo.exe (supports remote computers also).

PSInfo.exe is in the in the free PsTools suite found at
http://www.sysinternals.com/

A VBScript example that picks up the processor type from PSInfo.exe:

'--------------------8<----------------------
Const OpenAsASCII = 0
Const FailIfNotExist = 0
Const ForReading = 1

sExe = "F:\sysinternals\Pstools\Psinfo.exe"

Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
sTempFile = oShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%TEMP%\") & oFSO.GetTempName

oShell.Run "%comspec% /c " & sExe & " ""Processor type"" -c >" _
& sTempFile, 0, True

Set fFile = oFSO.OpenTextFile(sTempFile, ForReading, _
FailIfNotExist, OpenAsASCII)

sResult = fFile.ReadLine
fFile.Close
oFSO.DeleteFile(sTempFile)

aResult = Split(sResult, ",")
WScript.Echo "Processor type: " & aResult(1)
'--------------------8<----------------------