I am trying to compare how an i7 dual core 2.7Ghz would perform vs. an i7 quad core 2.0Ghz in a multitasking environment. The quad core scores at around 9000 while the dual comes in at around 7500 (for Geekbench). At the same time, Geekbench explicity specifies that the tests show the full performance potential of all the cores. However, in real world, everyday use, almost none of the application I would be running are multi-threaded (Ruby runtime, Java IDE, Windows VM on mac, app server).
This machine would server as a web development machine. Which cpu would be most “snappy” in terms of response time in this use case?
Results of a benchmark have any practical meaning only if the benchmark very closely approximates your typical workload.
You should consider whether your typical development environment regularly calls for parallelism. For example, if I develop a C/C++/Java app it’s common that a header file (or Java source) change to cause several other files to be recompiled and a few binaries to be relinked – that’s a highly parallel workload and many-core CPU may prove advantageous.
On the other hand, if I’m changing a few Python or Javascript sources, I doubt I will create any parallel workload when I try to execute and test the changes.
However, these are theoretical considerations.
I don’t think the speed of the machine is a bottleneck in any development effort. The human is.