QUOTE(John Art @ 11/21/08, 09:16 PM) [snapback]295701[/snapback]
Hmmm... not sure I quite get it, but isn't it the dual Quad core CPUs are much faster than single quads?
Depends on what you do. Heres a way to think of it:
Number of cores and processors is like hiring more people while speed of the individual core is hiring better people. For certain tasks it is true that having 2 times as many workers it i faster to get things done. However not all works benefit form more people in the decission loop.
Theese tasks occur when you cant simply split the decisions calculations into 2. One reason being that the decisions are chained, the other is thet untill afew years ago NOBODY was using multiple corres and ist MUCH cheaper to program single threaded apps*. MOST applications are single threaded, that means all their decisions are in a chain that follows each other. Having such a application benefits nothing form multiple cores or multiple processors. Most applucations Graphic user interfaces are single threaded, 3DS max for example is, whereas maya 2009 is slightly multithreaded but not completely. This means that the cores fire at full power when doing certain kinds of tasks whereas a faster core allways lets you fire faster. So the faster single processor is ALLWAYS better than 2 slower ones for users personal experience.
This means thet only usually the final calculation is sped up by more processors, whereas this is a big deal for me, its not necceserily a big deal to all humans. Because you now need to use your computer WAY more effeicently. So to really use many cores you need to do many things at once.
Its atradeof, if we could make a single core as fast as 2 id take it in heartbeat but because we cannot its not a simple question of more being better. More might be better or it might not. This si just the best we can do, its nowhere ideal, yes it sucks. This si life.
The i7 is definitelly beter but thengagain not. Its more expensive to get all the parts so you can benefit form the full power of the i7. They are also largely untested at this point, so you might opt for stability ower raw speed ghere as you can get more cost effective with a limitted budget. Me personally i opted for more memory than a i7 and just more processors. But remember that I have special needs.
*mainly because only so many people out there can think in parallel.