Dual or Quad Core-How do they work?

[abraxus]

In practical terms what difference would I notice between a core2duo and core2quad processor?

Currently the most processor intensive thing I do is transcode and stream video in various formats from my pc to either my xbox 360 or via Orb to my phone. This is on an old single core 2.13Ghz processor, which usually maxes out doing this.

How is something like this handled on multiple core processors, does the load get spread across all the available cores? Is it as simple as saying that a Q6600 would be running at half the load of an E6600 or doesn't it work like that?

Thanks.

[devbod]

Whether or not your video sw will benefit depends on if its been written to take advantage of the extra cpus. Easiest way to find that out is to do a google on the name of the sw with 'performance' and 'quad core'. I'd be hopeful as video encoding is one of the areas where multiple cpu support has been around for a while.

Other thing you'll probably notice is that the machine remains usable while the transcoding is taking place.