On laptops, absolutely -- especially since quad core machines are still a pretty narrow chunk of the market. If anything, the huge success of ultrabooks in the past two years (and the MacBook Air for a couple of years before them) has probably brought average CPU speeds down a bit compared to early 2012 when the Ivy Bridge chips came out and the first really good ultrabook chips were still "coming later this year."

Even with a quad core machine, my current personal laptop has a slightly slower CPU than my last one (i7-4702HQ vs. i7-3720QM)... and I really, really don't care. The graphics (both discreet and integrated) are a lot better, and the machine is 2 1/2 pounds lighter with a bigger screen -- it's basically Dell's attempt to clone the MacBook Pro form factor. Major wins all around except for the CPU, and fast enough CPU that the differences are never actually noticeable.