Dual-Core Speed Ratings?

Question

When computer manufacturers tell you the speed of the dual-core processor in the computer, do they tell you the speed of one of the cores, or both combined?

Answer 1

Yep, the guy above me explained it perfectly. a dual-core CPU can basically multitask, and do 2 things at once. the benefit of a dual-core or even a quad-core is that if you had a single core, you could run, say, windows media player, and everything else would be slow. having two or even four cores allows windows media player to use only one core on your processor, leaving the other one or three available to do things like browse the internet or play solitaire. It is a little bit more advanced than that but that is basically the gist of it.

Answer 2

take for example a e8500 3.0ghz, each core is 3.0ghz x 2 = 6ghz combined speed

Answer 3

The speed given is the operation speed for either core.

Since information can be processed by only one core at a time, the speeds are for either one. The speeds are not additive because any single bit of information will not be processed by both cores.

They operate in parallel.

The gain in dual core is that one core can be running one program, while the other core runs a second program.

If a program is written correctly part of it can run on one core while another part runs on the second core, hence that program will be completed faster.

All information will be processed at one speed, say 2 Ghz, but the program will finish faster because part is done by one core and part by the other core, at the same time. Nothing runs at 4 Ghz at any time.