Verified answer

Think of it this way, a dual core is like having 2 CPUs, a tri-core is like having 3 CPUs, and a quad-core is like having 4 CPUs. You can also find 6 and 8 core CPUs.

The more cores you have the more tasks the PC can handle. Quad-cores or higher are better for people who play PC games and edit videos. This is because Games and Editing programs are coded to use 4 cores or more. If playing music and surfing the web is all you do then a dual-core is enough.

Dual is 2 cores, triple is 3 cores, quad is 4 cores. 4 cores can do twice as much as 2 cores in the same amount of time thus making it faster. Better for gaming or anything that needs speed. Makes the screens come up faster as well so you don't have to wait.

it is just how many cpu's there are in one physical chip.

for example, a dual core cpu has essentially 2 processing units inside of one chip.

quad core cpu's are just 4 processing units fit onto one chip.

AMD has triple core cpu's which are just quad cores, but since not all of them that are made turn out perfect, one of the processing units is defective and therefore disabled, leaving only 3 useful cores.

when you open up task manager, how many separate graphs tell you how many cores you have.

but beware of this because some of intel's chips have hyper threading which make each core look like it is 2 cores so a dual core i3 would look as if it is a quad core and a quad core i7 would look like it has 8 cores

hope this helps