You can't compare clock speed unless it's the same architecture. 1ghz can beat 2ghz, so throw that out. Even in the cpus you linked to, the i5 has 1mb l2, vs the 8mb c2q. 1mb wins, so let's throw that out. Tdp is not power consumption, misleading info. Multiplier is irrelevant, that is just one part of the equation that equals the cpu speed. Other architecture info is irrelevant, really who cares how many transistors you have? In the end real world performance for the price you're paying is all that matters. Throw the spec sheet out the window. Synthetics can give you an idea of performance but different software has different workloads. Even if it were a multi threaded software, they will perform differently. Let's take ps and pr for example. In the other link posted, the q9550 is faster than an i3 in ps by a good amount but slower, almost equal to it in pr.