Loudoun County, Virginia (Source: Genealogy Trails History Group) Loudoun County, Virginia (Source: Wayback Machine) Loudoun County, Virginia Genealogy (Source: USGenWeb)
The Intel Core i7 Processor is a top of the line quad-core processor. The games you're referring to are probably referring to dual-core processors. A 1.73 ghz i7 is significantly faster than a 2.4 ghz i3. Don't worry, you're good to go.
Another major difference is the number of cores available. On the desktop, Core i5s always have four cores, but Core i7s can have between four and ten cores. That means an eight core i7 can handle 16 threads at once with hyper-threading, and a ten-core i7 processor can handle 20 threads at once.