New MBP Processors Question

[aevelasquez]

So what is the speed discrepancy in between a 2.7 Ghz Dual Core i5 and a 2.2 Ghz Quad-Core i7?
Which leap was bigger in CPU? from IC2D to i5/17 or from i5/i7 to Sandy Bridge?

 

[KPOM]

For most applications, the leap from Core 2 Duo to Sandy Bridge Core i5/i7 is bigger than the jump from dual core to quad core. Core i5/i7 offers TurboBoost, which lets applications that need only one core temporarily overclock the CPU. It also enables hyperthreading so that applications that do use multiple cores to pretend that there are 4 cores instead of the 2 that actually exist.

 

[aevelasquez]

For most applications, the leap from Core 2 Duo to Sandy Bridge Core i5/i7 is bigger than the jump from dual core to quad core. Core i5/i7 offers TurboBoost, which lets applications that need only one core temporarily overclock the CPU. It also enables hyperthreading so that applications that do use multiple cores to pretend that there are 4 cores instead of the 2 that actually exist.

Ah, I've gotcha. I was already aware of the hyperthreading capabilities in the original i5/i7 processors, do the new Sandy Bridge Generation processors hyperthread at a greater level?

Also how many more threads are there for the new processor?
Is it threads per core or just total threads? (sorry if that's a stupid question)

 

[Mackilroy]

Hyperthreading doesn't work like that. A processor with HT means that if it's a dual-core, it has four threads. A processor with four cores has eight threads, and so on. There's also Turbo Boost, which speeds up your processor when you're using an application that could benefit from a higher processor speed but fewer cores (and those unused cores are shut down in the meantime).

However, HT doesn't give you free cores – from what I recall, it only offers fifteen to thirty percent better performance over a processor without HT.