I was thinking of what is important in a processor and I can't seem to figure out if it is better to have a quad core processor with a couple ghz or if its better to have a processor that has 4 ghz
You can't compare the clock speed of processors based on different architectures. A modern cpu (Athlon x2, Core 2, Core i7, Phenom) would beat something like a Pentium D or Pentium 4 regardless of the difference in clock speed.