dual cores? quad cores? confusing me

ok I just need some help with cores and core speeds here, because I'm hopeless with computer things. I have a pentium 4 3.2 ghz core. I always see people talkin about a dual core thats 2.5 ghz, whats the difference because it sounds slower thatn a 3.2ghz or whatevr. I'm planning to change my core in future to a quad processer, can anyone help me here?

Clock speeds are an innaccurate measurement of a processor's capabilities in this day and age. They're only useful for comparing processors from the same lineup. With that being said, the Core 2 Duo can do more with two cores clocked at 2.4GHz than a Pentium 4 clocked at 3.2GHz could ever hope to do. The Core 2 Duo has a much more efficient method of using that clock speed, making it a vastly superior processor. Having two cores also helps, since one core can focus on one task while the other core can focus on another task. Or if an application is multi-threaded, the application can use both cores in conjunction with each other for an even greater improvement in performance.

Think of GHz like horsepower in a car. It's all well and good to say one car is better because it has 300WHp and another car only has 225WHp, but if the first car is 1500lbs heavier and is front-wheel drive while the second car is a midship-engine rear-wheel drive design, guess which car is probably going to be better, and use its horsepower more efficiently?

Think of GHz like horsepower in a car. It's all well and good to say one car is better because it has 300WHp and another car only has 225WHp, but if the first car is 1500lbs heavier and is front-wheel drive while the second car is a midship-engine rear-wheel drive design, guess which car is probably going to be better, and use its horsepower more efficiently?

RayvinAzn