(May 6, 2009 at 3:35 am)Darwinian Wrote: At the moment I have a Dual Core 2.7 mhz PC. After my daughters PC went bang I had a look on the net for a new one.As far as I am aware (from my university courses and research online) the matter is simple multiplication. The "2.7 MHz" value is for one core. Ergo a Dual Core 2.7 MHz has two cores of 2.7 MHz each, and the Quad Core 2.2 MHz has 4 cores of 2.2 MHz each. Of course this doesn't count software restrictions, but the technical specs should be there.
What slightly puzzled me was the description of a Quad Core PC. It stated that it had a speed of 2.2 mhz.
Now, the question is, is my Dual core 2.7 faster than the Quad core 2.2? And if so, why bother with a Quad?
Now a 2.7 dual core might actually work out faster than a Quad 2.2 since the actual singles cores are faster. If you have a system that exploits the multiple cores, then the quad will be faster, but if you don't then the dual will probably be the faster system.
I found an interesting Yahoo Answers article that explains things a bit better: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...506AAjx70m
If you are going for a gaming system or using Windows 32bit then get the Dual core since it has faster individual processors, although more games are apparently being made for quad cores. If you are using Linux, then get the quad.
