Quote Originally Posted by MinistryOvWar View Post
but the 3.3 GHz Phenom II X6 is a 6 core.

i7 has the Power Gate which is able to switch off cores which are not in use, saving switching and leakage power. Turbo Mode monitors the CPU use and in situations where there is significant load on a core the multiplier for that part of the CPU will be increased to further enhance performance.

i7 4 cores x 2 threads each= 8

can the AMD do the same wiv 6?
The AMD does underclocking to save power. Turbo turns down 3 cores and overclocks the other three for applications that don't need that many cores, too.