Xeon 3ghz E5-2682 v4 how many cores to use

[glc]

Hi, this would be my 2nd post
I have an Intel Xeon E5-2682 running turbo mode from 2.5ghz and now 3ghz (never saw it at 3ghz just 2.9ghz)
It has 16 cores capable of 32 threads if hyperthreading is enabled (which I disabled)
My question I like to ask:
1) would using less cores be better? ( a choice offered by the motherboard BIOS)
It seems that at full 16 cores only the first few cores run at turbo speed while the rest maybe sometimes do
And if fewer cores are used, would they all be running at the same higher ghz therefore better since I only do occasional gaming?
2) So I'm wondering for this CPU would 4 or 6 or 8 cores be better?
(currently using only 8 cores)

 

[Colif]

You might get a faster answer over here:

CPUs

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Limiting it to 8 cores with HT would give you basically a 25% underclocked I7 6900K.

Either way I really doubt youll get much benefit out of messing with it, sorry to tell you. 2.5 to 3 ghz gives you 10% more performance on the core. If a game scales totally linearly with clockspeed (which they often dont) then that would boost you from 30 FPS up to 33 FPS, providing the game was only using one core.

My brain is stupid, its 20% more providing you are entirely CPU limited, so maybe gets you something you might notice a little.