CPU Speed Question

[James D]

I know a little about computers but since all this Duo Core Quad Core stuff
came about it seems as though Intell doesn't base their chips on speed
anymore.

I'm looking at another prebuilt system. My question is, how does a Intel®
Core™ 2 Quad Processor Q6600 2.40GHz compare to a P4 2.40GHz speed wise?

Last time I bought a pre-built system, the sales guy told me the Duo core
(which was a 1.8 GHZ) was actually "two" 1.86's which equaled out to a 3.72
GHz processor. I later found out that was not true, but with one gig of ram,
it still ran slow and now I am confused as to what to upgrade my system to.

Any thoughts?

 

[Paul]

I know a little about computers but since all this Duo Core Quad Core stuff
came about it seems as though Intell doesn't base their chips on speed
anymore.

I'm looking at another prebuilt system. My question is, how does a Intel®
Core™ 2 Quad Processor Q6600 2.40GHz compare to a P4 2.40GHz speed wise?

Last time I bought a pre-built system, the sales guy told me the Duo core
(which was a 1.8 GHZ) was actually "two" 1.86's which equaled out to a 3.72
GHz processor. I later found out that was not true, but with one gig of ram,
it still ran slow and now I am confused as to what to upgrade my system to.

Any thoughts?

The scale factor for Core2, is more than 1.5x for integer execution. Maybe
1.8x would be a fun number to use. If we're conservative for a moment, each
core of the Q6600 is more like a Pentium 4 at 3.6+ GHz.

There are four cores in there, so four separate programs could have their
own private 3.6GHz processor. Or, if you were using a multicore aware
program, it could put separate threads on each processor (a program like
Photoshop or other multimedia type tools). On some older software, that
only uses one core, it'll feel 50% faster than your P4 2.4GHz.

I think the Core2 floating point might be a bit weaker, comparatively
speaking. I've never found any review article that examined FP performance
in any detail, so don't know what to make of the benchmarks I've seen.

So, to summarize "how does a Intel Core2 Quad Processor Q6600 2.40GHz
compare to a P4 2.40GHz speed wise", it blows the doors off it
Especially if you are using modern software - use software that was
as recently released as possible, for best effect.

I'm not really crazy about the benchmarks they run here, because the
benchmarks are not fair representations of what to expect. But at least
the charts are colorful, and fun to drool over, even if they don't tell
the whole truth:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=871&model2=906&chart=416

HTH,
Paul

 

[darklight]

one question that people don't ask here is what are you going to do with the
pc
second why don't you build your own pc you will learn more and understand
more, you save money in the end.

 

[James D]

I mainly do video audio and graphic type stuff (photoshop) and at this point
I've built a dozen or so over the years. After pricing everything I want in
it, I figured I'd just go prebuilt. Or...maybe I'm getting lazy *sigh*

 

[James D]

Wow Paul, looks like you've done your homework. That pretty much breaks it
down to no nonsense understanding.