Number of Cores vs Clock Speed - Which is Better

Number of Cores vs Clock Speed - Summary  

In all instances I have found it better to have more cores, as a opposed to fewer cores, regardless of clock speed. 

Number of Cores vs Clock Speed - Example 

I run a XW8400 and an XW6600. They are both capable of running 8 cores split over two physical processors.  

I have run the XW8400 in two configurations:

• 2 x Xeon 5160 (2 x 2 Core Processors @ 3.00GHZ - Total 4 Cores)
• 2 x Xeon E5345 (2 x 4 Core Processors @ 2.33GHZ - Total 8 Cores)

Despite the significantly lower clock speed, the 8 core set up is:

• Quicker 
• Less Glitchy 
• More Stable 

Number of Cores vs Clock Speed - How Do I Know This 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ gives the following marks for the CPUs

• Xeon 5160 - 963
• Xeon E5345- 1868

Both systems are running 16GB RAM and High Quality SSDs. As such bottlenecks from these components are reduced. 

I also really do trash this old PC with modern heavy modelling software & and video encoding. And have found that in all cases the machine is less prone to hang ups, and crashes when run in an 8 core configuration, as opposed to a 4 core configuration. And also completes tasks much moire quickly. 

This is based on 10 years of observations, and using the same machine with 3 different operating systems (XP / 7 / 10). 

Additional 

Why am I using such an old (18 years) PC?

This:

And guess what this 18 year old PC still works really well. Please consider fixing / or upgrading what you already have, rather then adding discarding your equipment and adding to the e-waste problem. 

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