Help understanding processors i7 duel core and quad core.

[waynedance]

I have selected the i7quad core 3630qm but how come the i5 and i7 duel cores cost more are they better?

Tried to find the answer on the net but still a little confused why the higher price when only duel core.

 

[Marks]

If you have a program that runs on only one core then the faster the processor the faster it will run, so a say 2.8ghz dual core would run the app faster than a 2.3 quad core, however if you run programs that can use 3 or 4 cores then they should be faster on the quad core.

Remember that if you run a few processor hungary apps then a core for each of 3 or 4 programs would probably be faster than running those 3 or 4 programs on a slightly higher ghz processor clock but sharing cores between apps. eg 3 programs on 2.3 ghz each and another 2.3ghz core free for other computer functions that are carried out, compared to 3 programs sharing 2 cores at 2.8 ghz each.

Remember back in the old days of single core, one thing nabbing all the computers processing power would grind the computer to a halt.