3.06GHz Core2 Duo vs. 1.73GHz Quad Core

[Guest]

Am looking to buy a laptop for a user who primarily uses E-Mail, MS Office, Web Browsing, and MultiMedia. No gaming, extensive photoshop or other graphic/video editing, no CAD, etc. Vendor is offering option of getting a 3.06GHz Core2 Duo processor or a 1.73GHz Quad Core. Which is the better option given my user's needs?

[sholling]

There's a lot more going on here than just processor speed. You should consider the features each processor has, front side bus speed, L1, L2, L3 cache size Hper threading, ...etc. What you will need to do is get the complete name for both CPUs (They should look something like this: Intel Core2 Duo E8435 @ 3.06GHz). and then find them on the charts at: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ It might be easiest to look on the search for your CPU model chart. Good luck.

[Thandor]

I would say: Core 2 Duo. The Quad-core has two additional cores but these will not be utilized by simple office work. In your case the individual tasks will use one core and one 3.06GHz core can do it's job much faster than a 1.73GHz core.

Of course L#-cache and such is important but in this case it's pretty obvious.

[gshv]

Thandor is right. If you don't run many things at once then the Core 2 Duo would be the best for you. Quad-cores have Dynamic Acceleration feature, but even with this feature it would still be noticeably slower than Core 2 Duo. That is true if the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad family names are correct. There is no mobile Core 2 Quad @1.73 GHz, so I suspect that either the seller didn't provide you correct core frequency, or you're talking about Core i5/Core i7 processors.

Gennadiy

[Guest]

Thank you sholling, Thandor, and gshv! All very useful information and definately helpful in making my decision...given my user's needs and based on your recommendations, will go with the Dual Core. Thank you all again for the direct, yet informative responses!