So, if I have a 2ghz Intel Core 2 duo processor is it then worth 4ghz on a single processor?


Sorry for my idiocy and thanks in advance.

I believe so, please don't rely on my word though.

It depends. Nowadays, for an individual program it's often better to have a 4 ghz single, because multithreading might not be used heavily. In newer programs, however, a dual core would produce less bottleneck.

It's not quite as simple as adding 2 and 2 together in the context of multicore processors as it does depend on what application(s) you are running etc.

It depends, but the answer is mostly no, it's not the same. To make things short and less technical, a lot of programs are optomized for dual core processors so you will benifit from a dual vs single. Also, you have realize that there's more to how well a processor is than its speed, you have see it's FSB speed, it's HT speed, it's manufacturing technology, and it's memory size (L2 Cache, L3 Cache, etc). So there's more to it than just adding 2ghz, besides it's less conventional to have a single core seeing how everything just works better dual core. If you go with the 2ghz dual core processor hypothetically speaking, just overclock it as much as you can, that'll show that single core processor a lesson!

If a processor is dual core and it is 2 GHz (like in your case), then each of those cores are 1 GHz. A dual core is just better, because each of those cores can handle different stuff simultaneously. This is especially good for games.

"If a processor is dual core and it is 2 GHz (like in your case), then each of those cores are 1 GHz. A dual core is just better, because each of those cores can handle different stuff simultaneously. This is especially good for games."

Basically a dual core cpu has 2 processors in the same package.  Each runs at the stated speed (ie. 2 Ghz).  This is not the same as a single 4GHz cpu.  What 2 processors give you is the ability to do 2 tasks at the same time.  This only works if the tasks are actually split out.  A single threaded program will run much faster on a 4Ghz cpu than a 2Ghz dual core cpu because only one of the cores is being used.  If a program is multithreaded it may be even faster on the dual core than the 4Ghz cpu because the 4Ghz cpu may not be able to run at full speed all the time.  This is program dependent.  The downside is that multithreaded programming is much harder than single threaded.

Nowadays, multicore (or multicpu) is the way everyone is increasing performance.  That's because you can only increase the speed so much before you start hitting some physical limits.  All of the fast supercomputers are muli-cpu machines with 1000s of individual cpus.

"It's not quite as simple as adding 2 and 2 together in the context of multicore processors as it does depend on what application(s) you are running etc.

If I was to run a game which supported multithreaded processing on a multicore processor, it would typically run "faster" than a single core processor of the same combined clock speed. 

On the other hand, if you were to find a game which only supports a single core (older games, typically) but recommends a CPU faster than 2GHz, a dual core system would not run it as well as a 4GHz single core. I'm fairly sure you won't find a game that fits these criteria, they're typically more dependant on your GPU, but it can be the case with operations that are CPU intensive such as rendering in 3D modelling apps or heavy image/video/audio manipulation, although these apps are generally gaining multithreading support.

If you were multitasking (perhaps running a CPU intensive operation, as well as a game) - a multicore CPU would cope with this better. You'll also find that with most modern multicore CPUs, the FSB is significantly faster than that on a single core CPU, which often means your applications run faster anyway...

So basically, in this case, 2+2 = 2+2, not 4...

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