Confusion over processors

debsy72

Hello and I wonder if someone in the know can help me.

I am looking to replace my 5 year old Dell Dimension desktop with a laptop for more portability.
My confusion starts when looking at the processor speed. My 5 year old Dell has a pentium 4 2.4GHz processor and the laptops in my price range are between 1.6GHz and 2.0GHz. Even the mid range desktops seem to only be around 2.0GHz.
Why would my 5 year old pc be faster? Is it something to do with the type of processor?

Thanks

Duk

Usually because new processers are dual (2 Processors) or quad (4 Processors) core, So a 1.6 Core 2 Duo would pretty much be able to allocate 3.2GHz power.

Newer processors also come with more L1 and L2 cache which greatly increases the processing power also. I should also mention that newer processors support 64-Bit

This is only a simple overview without going into too much detail.

spakkker

The newer cpu's from intel work in a different, more efficient, way to the older pentiums and don't need such high clock frequencies. Also the new cpu's are dual core or more. The old pentiums were heading up a dead -end street , they ran hot and needed higher clock speeds -upto 3.8 I think.
Intel knew this and introduced completely new Core architechture - core 2 duo- they also kept the pentium + celeron brand names but the cpu's work completely different to the old one's.
My 2.0ghz pentium dual core was much faster than the 3.2 pentium I had before.

debsy72

Thanks for that, I thought it must have something to do with the duo processer in the pc information.

esuhl

The best way to compare processor performance objectively is to use a benchmarking tool that simulates the kind of things that you will be using the PC for. Tom's Hardware has some useful CPU benchmarks: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/processors,6.html

isofa

What you need to remember is speed of the processor isn't really an indication of power of the machine, it hasn't been for many years.

You don't buy a car because of it's top speed, and you shouldn't buy a computer in this way either.

RAM, HD, chipset, cache, graphics can have a huge impact on a computer's performance.

clickclash

isofa wrote: »

What you need to remember is speed of the processor isn't really an indication of power of the machine, it hasn't been for many years.

You don't buy a car because of it's top speed, and you shouldn't buy a computer in this way either.

RAM, HD, chipset, cache, graphics can have a huge impact on a computer's performance.

Even saying that, computer hardware is getting so efficient that even throwing around raw numbers of ram or cpu power isent a ideal indication of how smooth your computer is going to be.

Ideally, you should buy a nice efficient computer for what you need, trying to hit that sweet spot of power and affordability instead of spending a massive amount of overcost for very little gain you dont need.

Armengar

It is like trying to compare a 2.0l engine from my old hillman hunter with a 2.0l engine from a subaru impreza. They are both 2.0l right?

The internals inside modern processors are quite different between generations. do not be suckered in by marketting hype on dual or quad core processors. An extra core will add between nothing and 70% more speed depending on what you are doing. It is the newer architecture that will speed your computer up - even if the relative MHz is the same.

It depends on what you want to do. If you dont play games or try to design 3D models in autocad then a cheap dual core PC with 2Gb RAM will be sufficient (and be faster than your old PC)