How many physical CPU Cores does Windows support? (Asked in 2021)

Question

How many physical CPU Cores does Windows (amd64, not arm) support?

So with "physical CPU Cores" i mean that a CPU with 4 Cores and Hyperthreading counts as 4 and not 8 Cores. Also with "Windows" i mean the Versions (Workstations and Enterprise too) that target normal peoples consumer PCs, not Servers nor modified versions. (i dont want to know the maximal thread count a process can have)

Question 1:
I found a Table on Wikipedia which says the maximum would be 256 Cores and 4 CPU Sockets, but it is not noted that the maximum of 256 Cores is related to 1 CPU Socket or if its an overall limit? (so does it mean limit is 256 or 1024?)

Question 2:
Related to Hyperthreading, is Windows counting a CPU with 128 Cores and Hyperthreading as 256 Cores and with that reaches the limit? (so do i have to disable Hyperthreading if i install 4 CPUs with 64 Cores?)

Link to Wikipedia: Windows 10 Editions - Comparison chart

Answer 1

That chart you listed is correct.

The core-number you see there is "total # of cores in the computer" (all CPU's added together).

Microsoft considers Hyperthreading cores to be full cores for this calculation.
AFAIK this is for 2 reasons:

1. The concept of what exactly constitutes a hyperthreading core is not well defined. You can't really compare the core-implementations of AMD and Intel because there is different technology behind them.
2. When you operate a virtual machine the OS in the VM can't really tell if it has full or HT CPU cores. So Microsoft just considers them all full cores.

This is more or less industry standard actually. E.g. most software that have core-based licensing does exactly the same thing.