Solved Intel Cores Rundown

[ComputerN00b]

I am not having a problem as such however I am putting a little research into Processors and I have come into a little confusion relating to Quad and Duel cores especially relating to Intel cores and so on.
My current processor is a Intel Core i5-2400 @ 3.10GHz (4CPUs) Is this card a Quad or Duel core processor and how much more power are you getting with a Quad core processor is it exactly double ?
I am looking for a complete rundown including things like Clock-Speed and Turbo-Speed.

Thank You

 

[Dude]

ComputerNOOB, look here

:ar: Intel i5-2400

 

[kbrady1979]

Doug beat me to it. That link will tell you everything about that particular CPU.

 

[LMiller7]

A multi core CPU allows more than one thread to run at the same time. How much this will improve performance is heavily dependent on the nature of the software you are running. If you are running applications that can take full advantage of multiple cores (a small minority) a 4 core CPU would provide double the processing power of a dual core. For more typical applications the benefits will be much more modest.

 

[ComputerN00b]

Thanks for all your help, however I still have a few question regarding general stuff relating to CPU's such as what is a Cache and how what differences are there between different number caches, in my case a 6M cache.

 

[LMiller7]

With modern computer hardware the CPU is much faster than system RAM. Providing memory of equal speed would be prohibitively expensive. If something was not done accessing RAM would seriously impair system performance. To alleviate this issue the CPU maintains a cache, an internal copy of recently accessed data. If the data is in the cache it does not have to be accessed from the slower RAM.

Generally the larger the cache the better. There are different types of cache, each with it's advantages and disadvantages. This is very complex and I will attempt to explain it.

 

[Dude]

Good explanation LMiller7.

ComputerNOOb, read this article

Understanding CPU caching and performance | Ars Technica

 

[whs]

More cores are only useful if you run programs that make use of the additional cores - most programs don't.

I found the additional cores useful for video encoding - but even there you can get disappointed. E.g. Format Factory used to run all cores but the newest versions do not do that any more and are, of course slower.

Another area where I appreciate the additional cores is when I run my virtual machines with VMware Player. Here I can assign at least 2 cores to the virtual system.

 

[3D Jed]

I seem to use mainly software that uses all the cores you can afford. Here's an interesting demo of a Cinebench test with 2 core vs 8 core vs 12 core (actually 24 hyperthreads). I know they are different chips, but see the difference cores make.

12 Core vs. 8 Core vs. 2 Core – Cinema 4D Render Speed Test - Greyscalegorilla

 

[whs]

I guess if you use such programs, then the number of cores will make a difference.