Query About Processors?

Legacy_user

Say about 3-4 years ago, you got Celerons at say 2.6Ghz and Pentiums at 3.0GHZ,

Last week I bought a new laptop with a Celeron M at 2GHZ and also had a dualcore at 1.6Ghz,

So how come processor speeds are going down? Or am I missing something?

Antispam

Clock speed in processors is only one factor in to determining how fast a processor runs

Most modern processors at least for the home are multi core and run far more efficiently than previous processors too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_rate

"The clock rate of a computer is only useful for providing comparisons between computer chips in the same processor family. An IBM PC with an Intel 486 CPU running at 50 MHz will be about twice as fast as one with the same CPU, memory and display running at 25 MHz, while the same will not be true for MIPS R4000 running at the same clock rate as the two are different processors with different functionality. Furthermore, there are many other factors to consider when comparing the performance of entire computers, like the clock rate of the computer's front side bus (FSB), the clock rate of the RAM, the width in bits of the CPU's bus and the amount of Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 cache. Clock rates should not be used when comparing different computers or different processor families. Rather, some software benchmark should be used. Clock rates can be very misleading since the amount of work different computer chips can do in one cycle varies. For example, RISC CPUs tend to have simpler instructions than CISC CPUs (but higher clock rates), and superscalar processors can execute more than one instruction per cycle (on average), yet it is not uncommon for them to do "less" in a clock cycle. In addition, subscalar CPUs or use of parallelism can also affect the quality of the computer regardless of clock rate."

Marty_J

They're dual-core processors, so they can process data more efficiently. Manufacturers are beginning to hit the limit to how fast they can make their processors using current technology. So instead of making them faster (i.e. a higher clock speed), they are putting more than one processor core on a chip.

Conor_3

What manufacturers are doing is managing to get more instructions carried out per clock cycle by improvements in the architecture.

DatabaseError

or....what they have done is make it much harder for people to understand what they're getting....back in the bad old days we all know a 2 Ghz computer was basically faster than a 1.5ghz, but how about an E8500, or a Q6600, or a phenom X3 8750? the numbers have become meaningless.

esuhl

DatabaseError wrote: »

or....what they have done is make it much harder for people to understand what they're getting....back in the bad old days we all know a 2 Ghz computer was basically faster than a 1.5ghz, but how about an E8500, or a Q6600, or a phenom X3 8750? the numbers have become meaningless.

The numbers have always been meaningless in isolation. Performance depends entirely on the chip architechture. In the days of 2.0GHz PCs you had Pentium III, II, I, MMX, 486s, etc., so you could never say that a 2.0GHz PC was ten times as fast as a 200MHz one - there are too many other factors involved.

And that's just focusing on the chip - the computer's speed will also depend on the memory type/quality/settings, the graphics adaptor, hard disk spindle speed, hard disk cache, etc., etc.

The best thing to do when choosing a chip or PC is to look at a range of independent benchmarks (e.g. the ones at tomshardware.co.uk) that simulate the sort of things you will be using the PC for. Then when you know the chip architecture that you want, you can make your choice of chip speed and everything else (motherboard, graphics card, etc.).