trouble with HT

[Jonathan Horne]

building a new system, processor is:

CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz (2793.20-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0xf29  Stepping = 9
Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,
PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,
TM,PBE>
  Features2=0x4400<CNTX-ID,<b14>>

and the chipset is Intel 865G.  in 6.2, the old method of enabling HT with sysctl.conf seems to be depricated, as i got a nastygram from dmesg that im a dummy on boot up (so i took those back out).  then i read thru some docs, and apparently, HT is supposed to be enabled in the base release now.

strange part is, for a while, 'top -C' would show me the C column, and i actually could see some 0's and 1's, so i went about my business of building ports.  now that i go back, the -C is no longer being obeyed, and i cant get the C column to appear.

how can i verify that HT is working?  my mobo (IBM 8189) doesnt seem to have an on/off for HT, so my first inclenation is assume that its on (we have many windows machines running on this hardware, and HT never seems to be a problem with those).

any pointers would be appreciated (and yes, already know alllll about the security advisories... :)

thanks,
jonathan