About cores and clock speed

[slo-climber]

Where is noticeable the difference if I have 4 cores with lower clock speed than 2 cores with higher clock speed? Is a given clock speed (let say 2.5 GHz) meant for each of the core or not? Like 4x 2.5 GHz if I have 4 cores.

AFAIK, more cores are better for multi-task applications. But what exactly does it mean? Does it mean that I have opened more applications at the same time like web browser, photoshop, lightroom, iWork, Keynote (5 programs) or does it mean that there is such program which is able to use several cores for itself?

Thanks

 

[yjchua95]

Where is noticeable the difference if I have 4 cores with lower clock speed than 2 cores with higher clock speed? Is a given clock speed (let say 2.5 GHz) meant for each of the core or not? Like 4x 2.5 GHz if I have 4 cores.

AFAIK, more cores are better for multi-task applications. But what exactly does it mean? Does it mean that I have opened more applications at the same time like web browser, photoshop, lightroom, iWork, Keynote (5 programs) or does it mean that there is such program which is able to use several cores for itself?

Thanks

A 2.6GHz quad-core i7 is still way faster than a 2.8GHz dual-core i7 (the 2.6GHz quad core i7 scores around 14500 and the 2.8GHz dual core i7 scores around 7000 on Geekbench 3).

The more cores you have, the more tasks the processor can spread out.

Some, but not all programs take advantage of multi-core systems.

On the 2.6GHz i7, it can operate between 2.6-3.6GHz on all 4 cores, 3.7GHz on 2 cores and 3.8GHz on one core.

On the 2.8GHz i7, it can operate at 2.8GHz on two cores (way slower than the processor above, that can operate at 3.7GHz on two cores) and 3.3GHz on one core.

 

[slo-climber]

Great. Thanks for your explanation.