why does my single core work so good?

ok im running a AMD Athalon 64 processor 3500+ with 2 gig of ddr1 ram and a Radeon x1650 series, and my question is why does it work so good i mean its ancient, and it outperforms all my old computers and my friend has a new laptop (runs modern warefare 2 ) i still outperform his computer . lol the only prob i have is win media player 12 (weird) im running win 7 ultimate on it 32 bit and my performance is 4.2 on the win rateing still games work wasome on it im playing games that have no reason to work on single core better than it worked on my dual core 2 1.7 gig and my friends laptop 2.2 gig dual core 2,

is it win 7?
is it that single cores were made that good?
maybee the videocard takes all the weight (videocards as old as the cpu)

idk any ideas lol

well, to start with you have athlon (spelling mistake you did there i guess since there is not athalon processors to my knowledge), and those were known to be very hood processors at its time, a worthy pentium 4 rivals. have athlon xp myself on my desktop, after 10 years its still buzzing like new. single core always perform better than 1 core of dual core processors. because to handle programs in 2 cores takes extra processing time for it to split the work. for example i have a intel core 2 duo (if you have jsut core duo, witho ut the 2, sell as fast as possible, they are very usntable, and silly people dont know that and buy it) 2 hearts at 2,4 ghz, should go equal to 4,8 ghz right? no. its real performance is merely 4 ghz because that 0,8 ghz is lost in handling the dual core factor. Yes new games make it easier, but if you run an older game that doesnt evne know 2 cores cna exist then your processor has to do all the thiking where to put theads and whatnot. also you have a 3500+, which is i guess overclocked, because processors never went above 3ghz without cloaking, as above 3 ghz frequencies start to change and its bad for processor, thanks to laws of physics. though sincei ts athlon your actual power is probably 3 ghz anyway, mine is 1700+ and runs at 1,465 ghz, athlon had a "different way of counting" back then.
now another thing to look at is that you are comparing a desktop with a laptop. that is fault on its own. laptop components usually are specific for laptops, they are smaller, expell less heat. antoher speciality of those components are - they are slower. you may have 4 ghz of processing power, and if you have to do 1 task like convert a movie, it works great. but if you have 1000 tasks per second coming and going, its slower response time cant catch up. if you bother looking you will see that cache, response times and other features on laptops tend to be slower. even ahrd drives are slower, 5200rpm on laptops, 7200 rpm on desktops, though new laptops come out with 7200 rpm ones now. also you must take a note at graphic card. my 7300 GT on desktop outperforms my 8600 GS on laptop, because its laptop card, which means its half the speed at best. laptop graphic card will never outperform same setup desktop graphic card, they are simply not built to, thus i guess its graphic card that slowers your laptop gaming and nto processor. i know mine does. for example playing fallout 3 my graphic card works 100% most of the time, while processor runs around 50%. while playing gta 4 (as laggy as it is at 15 fps) my graphic card runs on 100% and cpu runs at 70-80%. its the graphic card thats lacking in laptops now, and thus with such limitation it is no wonder your old desktop outperforms new laptops. i can list an umber of games my old desktop runs better. another factor is windows, many old (and by old i mean 1990-2003) games run much better on xp than on vista/7. infact vista made oen game totaly unplayeable as it started to lag horribly.