Core 2 Duo's?

Question

If a core 2 duo processor is 2ghz, does this mean its actually 4ghz because it has 2 core's or is the 2ghz shared between the 2 core's.

Basicly i own a pentium 4 3ghz computer. Im looking to upgrade to a 2ghz core 2 duo with 4mb L2 cache and want to know how much better it will be.

Answer 1

The Core 2 Duo is a dual core processor, which means it has two cores each running at 2Ghz. You cannot just double the speed. It will be faster than the Pentium 4, because the Core 2 Duos process much more data at a slower clock cycle than the Pentium 4. In addition, since you have 2 cores, you will be able to multitask better as well.

Answer 2

no, a core 2 duo will do parallel processing. It will process some information on one side and the other side, but both together will not equal double the processing speed.
The raw processing will be faster with the C2D, but you will not gain a double of speed of your computer, because of other hardware limitations(RAM, Video, Bus speed), software timings(OS, drivers, DLL's), and the type of software you are running.

Answer 3

Speed measured in GHz is the overall speed, not the combined speed. Any dual core processor does not increase your speed, but it allows you to run multiple applications at one time with no slow down or "lag."

Answer 4

No, actually it wouldn't process information that fast. First, in order to take advantage of a dual CPU, you need programs that are going to do multi-PROCESSING not TASKING. In simple terms, the program has to divide the process up nearly equally in order to take advantage of the machine power. There are just not that many progams out there that can do that.