Is this quad core 4x the power?

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SchizTech
Yes and no. Each core runs at 3.5 GHz but it's not necessarily like a single core at 14GHz. Programs which can utilize that many cores might see close to a 4x speedup but many common programs run on a single core. Traditional software development is single-threaded while writing software for multiple cores poses challenges above and beyond those of traditional programming. This is an area of active research in computer programming as I understand it.

Regardless, mutli-core CPUs are good at multitasking. Single-core CPUs have to switch rapidly between different tasks to multitask while a quad core can run a different program on each core at once. SO multi-core CPUs tend to feel very responsive because the OS can multitask more...
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SchizTech

SchizTech

Judicious
Jan 16, 2011
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Yes and no. Each core runs at 3.5 GHz but it's not necessarily like a single core at 14GHz. Programs which can utilize that many cores might see close to a 4x speedup but many common programs run on a single core. Traditional software development is single-threaded while writing software for multiple cores poses challenges above and beyond those of traditional programming. This is an area of active research in computer programming as I understand it.

Regardless, mutli-core CPUs are good at multitasking. Single-core CPUs have to switch rapidly between different tasks to multitask while a quad core can run a different program on each core at once. SO multi-core CPUs tend to feel very responsive because the OS can multitask more easily.
 
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lpzimm

Honorable
Jun 12, 2013
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Thank you! You described this perfectly! You are awesome!
 
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photonboy

photonboy

Titan
Jun 20, 2006
21,567
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Also, you linked the i7-3770K which actually has eight "threads" but four physical cores. Essentially you can "sneak" some secondary calculations into the same core for up to a 30% speed benefit over the i5-3570K.

*The i5-3570K however performs essentially IDENTICALLY for games and costs up to $100 less. That's money that could be spent elsewhere such as getting a GTX770 instead of an HD7970 graphics card.

WIKIPEDIA can also answer many questions you might have.
 
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