coelacanth, multi core chips are made up of separate complete processors on a single piece of silicon. Some AMD dual core chips are made up of quad core chips where two cores failed quality control. Each core can run a separate process from any other core, giving equivalent performance to 4 single processors. When evaluating multicore chips, you do not add the speeds of the cores. Each core runs at the stated speed. If you overclock a q6600 to 3ghz, which I've seen, each of the cores runs at 3 ghz. I use and specify multicore machines for my job. I know how these things work.
Now, Intel quad cores are made by putting two dual core chips in a single housing. That's why they can be marginally slower than comparable AMD chips where all the cores are on a single piece of silicon and the communication between processors isn't across the FSB.
coelacanth, multi core chips are made up of separate complete processors on a single piece of silicon. Some AMD dual core chips are made up of quad core chips where two cores failed quality control. Each core can run a separate process from any other core, giving equivalent performance to 4 single processors. When evaluating multicore chips, you do not add the speeds of the cores. Each core runs at the stated speed. If you overclock a q6600 to 3ghz, which I've seen, each of the cores runs at 3 ghz. I use and specify multicore machines for my job. I know how these things work.
Now, Intel quad cores are made by putting two dual core chips in a single housing. That's why they can be marginally slower than comparable AMD chips where all the cores are on a single piece of silicon and the communication between processors isn't across the FSB.