Intel Core 2 Q6600 vs my current AMD AthlonXP 2000+?

Question

OK, so I've had my somewhat rubbish AMD AthlonXP 2000+ PC for five years now, and I'm upgrading to a Intel Core 2 Q6600. It has 2GB DDR2 RAM, and a 512mb nVidia 8500GT graphics. My current PC has around 700mb RAM, and some 128mb graphics.

Now obviously it's more powerful, but what will the difference be like? Will it be like a 1.1litre Vauxhal Corsa racing a Bugatti? Or is that a little bit too drastic?

However, it says the Q6600 only has a clock speed of 2.4GHz - hardly impressive. What do four cores do, and how does this processor perform against high-end single-core CPUs? You know, the ones with clock speeds of like 3.6GHz etc

Answer 1

It will be much much faster for sure. However if you are a gamer you need to consider a different graphics card, that one is junk for gaming, assuming you like quality graphics when you play. But if you don't care about games, or don't mind crappy graphics when you play them, everything else is great.

Four cores is basically like having four processors, for example if you are doing three things at once, each one will have its own core dedicated to it, instead of all three having to share one core. There are some programs that can even use multiple cores at once, but the majority don't as of know.

As for the Ghz, first off, lets ignore the fact you have four cores, and just compare one of the 2.4Ghz in the Core 2 Quad to a Pentium 4 at 3.6Ghz. All those two numbers tell you is that the Core 2 has 2.4 billion clock cycles per second, and the Pentium 4 has 3.6 billion clock cycles per second. What they don't tell you is how much is processed each clock cycle. This is called Instructions Per Cycle (IPC) and it is equally important to processing power as Ghz, but it often completely ignored. The Core 2s have a much higher IPC, meanig they will process much more data than a Pentium 4, even at a lower Ghz.

Answer 2

Here is a list of configurations, least powerful to most:
Single < Dual < Quad
Imagine, with dual to single, a F-14 racing a Spitfire. With Quad to single, imaging a F-22 racing a Spitfire.

More cores means more multitasking, means more power, means MORE SPEED.

Answer 3

More cores mean more performance, so it'll be really fast, faster than a 3.6GHz.