
Unless you’re a hardware enthusiast, you may have missed the fact that Intel significantly lowered the price on it’s quad-core CPUs this weekend. A quad-core CPU has four processing units on one chip (this first quad-core from Intel is actually two dual-core CPUs on the same chip). With the price drop, a quad-core CPU can now be purchased for just a little more than a high-end dual-core. Four CPUs for the price of two. Sounds like a good deal, right?
Well, not so fast. Unlike clock speed increases, multiple cores don’t scale linearly. While a 2ghz CPU is twice as fast as the same CPU at 1ghz, a quad-core CPU is not four times as fast as a single core. Like most desktop technology, quad-core CPUs have migrated from the server market. Comparing server performance using round numbers, a dual-core CPU offers about a 50% performance over a single core (not 100%), and there are diminishing returns. A quad-core CPU is only about 25% faster that a dual-core CPU.