The whole "true quad" thing was just an attempt on AMD's part to convince people to buy the original Phenoms over the much faster Core 2 Quads. While it is true the Phenoms are monolithic quads and the Core 2's are not that doesn't have any impact on the consumer whatsoever.
The Core 2 quads have 4 physical cores, what you are describing sounds more like hyperthreading which they didn't use.