Core 2 Duo ? whats the go?

Question

just wondering when it says for the core 2 duo cpu speed that it is 2.4ghz goes that mean its 2.4ghz times 2 or just 2.4ghz because i always thought that core 2 duo meant the it was 2.4ghz x 2 = 4.8ghz

Answer 1

Ahhhh, you see. It's not quite as simple as that. :P
It is 2x2.4GHz, but that DOESN'T equal 4.8!
The problem is that a lot of applications are only single-threaded. This means that they only send one set of instrucitons throught the CPU at a time, in esscence. Therefore, they only take advantage of one core, and run at the same speed, or in some cases, slower! With multi-threaded applications, you're good-to-go, and with mulitple applications running at once, it's great.
Also, be aware please that C2D's are not the only dual-core CPU's around. AMD actually did it proerly first. It's just that C2D's hold much of the performace crown at the moment.

Answer 2

Core 2 Duo means that your computer (or the one you are referring to) has two CPUs. It is "one processor" but it has two "processing units".
Each of the units runs at the same GHZ rate (calculations per second).
If you have a core 2 duo with 2.4ghz then that is the ghz rate. The processors run simultaniously, each one at the same ghz.

The "speed" of the processor is not the sum of both. It is indeed the 2.4 you said. Simply, having 2 processors instead of one, the computer can perform, per second, twice as much calculations compared to only one. Hence the increase of speed. (I am simplyfing..)

Basically a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo performs twice as much calculations compared to a 2.4ghz single processor not because it is faster, but because it has more calculation power.

Moreover...
Intel has several processors.
Core Duo is a 32 bit processor
Core 2 Duo is a 64 bit processor

Core 2 Duo is great for multitasking because each processor can perform a distinct operation, speeding up overall performance...

So the latter, at the same clockspeed, is able to "receive" more data and to elaborate more.

Hope it helped.

Below you'll find a technical explanation by intel and the wikipedia article on core 2 duo

Answer 3

First off, Intel announced their first dual core before AMD did, AMD did manage to get theirs on the market about 10 days before Intel did, but lets not talk like AMD was years ahead like some other answerers are intimating.

Anyway, no you don't just multiply the speed. You have two processors running each at 2.4Ghz, which means basically you can run two processos at the same time at 2.4Ghz, instead of just one on a single core processor. It of course in reality is far far more technically complicated than that, but this is the simple way to break it down.

Answer 4

its exactly what mindstrider said and i aint gonna bother going over the same thing, but hes right, amd came up with the first properly working dual core, and personally i still think are great, i dont like intel very much, even tho i have one, and it works fine nothing wrong with it, but i prefer amd just cant afford to go get a mobo upgrade cause that would mean ddrII and then i would want Pci-e and well just more and more money these days (off topic) lol
yer does not mean 4.8ghz just means its less load off the processor

Answer 5

Two independent processor cores in one physical package run at the same frequency so both would be 2.4ghz