Laptop buying advice forum: Newbie with a processor question...

The actual speed is still 2.4Ghz, but there are simply either 2 (dual-core) or 4 (quad-core) "cores" EACH running at that speed. In short, then, you basically have four 2.4Ghz (or whatever speed you choose) running simultaneously which allows you to have four processing tasks taken care of at the same time at the 2.4Ghz speed. However, note that this is dependent on your OS, the specific applications you use, as well as system resources (RAM, cache on the processor, etc.). Put another way, in typical light usage (ie, just web surfing and office stuff), you probably won't notice much difference (a quad core will not be "twice as fast" as a dual core), but if you do heavy multitasking with programs coded to take advantage of multiple cores you will gain an advantage.

If I'm only playing a game and not running anything else I wouldn't benefit from a quad-core as opposed to a dual core since only one core would be used at a time for the game anyway? However if I was multitasking a few programs at once, then I'd benefit from the quad-core? Thanks everyone, I appreciate the help