Quote: "Say you had a quad core 2.2ghz processor, because it is quad core does that mean it is effectively 8.8ghz?"
No definitely not. The better something is programmed to take advantage of multi-cores then the closer it will come to your 8.8ghz target, but somethings just cannot be done.
On one end of the scale consider an algorithm that needs to calculate a million items, but each is dependent on the outcome of the last item. You cannot then split the task between the cores. So you are then effectively running at the slowest speed for that process. ie. a 2.4 Ghz single core (assuming architecture is identical to your quad core, and the rest of the PC is identical, with both software and hardware) should take about the same time to complete this task (any OS automatic clever logic for multi-core shannanigans may even make the quad slower as it attempts to automatically assign multiple cores instead of the single core that just gets on with things). Although running another app would probably then drag much more on the single core than the quad while the process runs
On the other hand say you are converting a video file. Assuming that each part of the file can be converted seperately then you could hand over each bit to a seperate core. If you have four cores then you should technically get close to four times the speed. I have a converter that will process a video on each core (not as good as my example granted) so if you have more than one video then it is a fair bit faster (disk access etc not taken into account there).
Although the other day I read something about Intel producing a demo 48 core processor. Nice. Would be great one day to have so many cores that each major process is handled by it's own core(s).
Cheers
I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
