Expert: Bobbert - 6/14/2008

Question
Which is better (in terms of overall speed: Intel Core 2 duo processor T5450 (1.66 Ghz), or a Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz processor?
Does a dual-core processor have twice as much processing power as it says, or is the number it says the total of the 2 processors?

Answer
You're likely referring to operational clock in terms of "the processing power", which is a common mistake. Processing power is measured in units of FLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second), which is a reflection of how much data the processor can actually handle. As far as Core 2 Duo vs Pentium 4, the Core 2 Duo has a few advantages, namely:

A) Higher FSB, meaning more data in/out, faster

B) Higher IPC rating, meaning its faster mhz for mhz

C) It's dual cored, which means it can execute multi-threaded code, or it can have two threads "in-flight" at the same time (which an SMP kernel, such as Windows XP, will take advantage of).

Honestly there is no competition between the T5450 and the Pentium 4 2GHZ, the Core 2 will win hands down.

-bob