Also seeing 2 x quad-core system slower that 2 x dual core

[Pete French]

> Check dmesg for the APIC numbers corresponding to the CPUs you want to 
> disable and add the corresponding entries to /boot/loader.conf, e.g.:

O.K., I did that, got it running on 4 CPU's only, and the problem
is still there - so it's not the number of CPU's after all. Which
is good in a way in that it is not completely defeating common sense,
but means I shall go and look elsewhere for the problem.

-pete.