Cores vs Threads: How many threads should I run on this machine?

This is what you want to know

Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    12
Socket(s):             4

You have 4 CPU sockets, each CPU can have, up to, 12 cores and each core can have two threads.

Your max thread count is, 4 CPU x 12 cores x 2 threads per core, so 12 x 4 x 2 is 96. Therefore the max thread count is 96 and max core count is 48.

What is better ?

That depends on what you want to do, more threads means less frequency (ie a 3ghz becomes split in two) but better multi-tasking (more threads) and using full cores (no hyper-threading) is better for high CPU usage tasks (ie games).

Hope this helps you.