Sep302012

What does clock speed mean in a dual or quad core CPU?

Osama Javaid asks:

My processor is a 3.1GHz Core-i3 which is in fact a dual core processor. Does it mean that I have two 3.1GHz processors OR does it mean that I have two 1550MHz processors?


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12 Answers -

0 votes

Bruce Epper

September 30, 2012

The processor clock speed is a chip-level spec not core-level so if your CPU is running at 3.1GHz, each core is running at that speed. (One clock to control them all.)

0 votes

ha14

September 30, 2012

each one is working on 3.1GHZ, the clock speed is per core

0 votes

Nikhil Gupta

October 1, 2012

clock speed means speed of a processor.
on which speed processor do their job.
if u have 3.1 ghz dual core processor then u have 2 core each core is of 3.1 ghz ….

0 votes

Ahmed Khalil

October 1, 2012

3.1Ghz is the clock ferquency of the processor and it not devided on the 2 cores.

0 votes

Isaac Elesha

October 1, 2012

this is the rate at which the processor completes a particular task.All things been equal,the the clock speed,the faster the processor completes a given task.note that clock speed alone ay not be enough standard to use when comparing two or more processors-the bus speed also comes into play..

0 votes

Dimal Chandrasiri

October 2, 2012

you have two processor cores that are running at 3.1Ghz. dual core means, twice the processing power as a single core CPU. not that, you have a CPU with 6.2Ghz total clock or a CPU with 2 cores that run at 1.5Ghz.

0 votes

Jacob

October 3, 2012

It means you have two processors (Dual core) and each processor is capable of running at 3.1 GHz.

0 votes

Alex Perkins

October 3, 2012

Each core is running at 3.1 GHz

0 votes

Usman Mubashir

October 5, 2012

clock speed means the the number of times your processor can process he data in one second.
check My Computer’s properties, there it will show something like this:
Intel Core i3 CPU @ 3.1 GHz 3.1 GHz

This shows that both your cores have same speed of 3.1 GHz.

0 votes

dhanunjayarao chunduri

October 6, 2012

clock speed means speed of a processor.
on which speed processor do their job.
if u have 3.1 ghz dual core processor then u have 2 core each core is of 3.1 ghz …

0 votes

Alex Perkins

October 18, 2012

Both cores run at 3.1 GHz.

0 votes

Knut H. Flottorp

October 20, 2012

It means that the clock frequency used on the CPU chip runs at 3.1GHz – or about 10cm/4″ of light distance per cycle. So, this frequency is for the single-chip only.Now you have to look at the cache speed, and the code the cache controller and then the full stop a memory fetch will cause.

So, if your 4GB of RAM runs at 300MHz, and need 5 cycles to fully load a 32 bit word – 10 cycles to fetch a 64 bit word, this is what will make things go slow. Bear in mind that most numbers you use is small, you are right if your wonder about the benefit of a 64bit processor and 6GB of memory. It may go faster as 32 bit, on a 1GB memory located next to the CPU – the 2 inches away may be a more than a nano-second. The other is how the code is written: Java is interpreted as is VBA, Perl and Python on Mac. It may look good, but if you want it to go fast, it should be compiled, like C and C++.