Please do not kill me for this question!?

[luegnicl]

what is the difference between a 3.2 ghz dual core and a 6.4 ghz single core (Performance)

[Oshino Shinobu]

Depends what CPUs you're comparing. IPC is a thing (basically, not all cores are equal). Also depends on the application, as not all will use multiple cores. 

[Aaronius_Leonius]

3.4ghz is 3400000000hz so that means the CPU interprets 3400000000 ticks per second

[luegnicl]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Depends what CPUs you're comparing. IPC is a thing (basically, not all cores are equal). 

the same cpu. the same cores. just count and clockspeeds. i do not talk about that amd bulldozer architecture with no real 8 cores f.e.

[manikyath]

well.. considering your theoretical example assumes they have the same IPC (instructions per clock, not really a measurable "number" as such, more a concept of efficiency, see it as the gas mileage on a car, it may change depending on what kind of road you're driving on, but some are inherently better than others)

 

if said assumption was true, they would both have the same (margin of error) total performance, as in when maxing out all cores, they would both do the job equally fast. the difference lies within when you cannot max out both cores with whatever you're doing (for example, a single threaded application like flight simulator X is notorious for), the 6.4 single core will pull ahead of the 3.2 dualcore.

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, luegnicl said:

the same cpu. the same cores. just count and clockspeeds. i do not talk about that amd bulldozer architecture with no real 8 cores f.e.

In that case it depends on the program and task. Different tasks will do better on multiple slower cores than a single fast one and others will do better the other way around. It depends on how the application handles multiple processing threads, how it divides tasks etc. etc. 

 

I get what you're asking, but no matter how you word it or set it up, it's always going to be a matter of "it depends". Unfortunately, there is no single or simple answer to it.