question about GHZ

almillar

GHz quoted is simply the maximum frequency of the processor, how many times it starts and stops in a second. It's becoming less and less relevant to the speed of a computer these days.
Dual core, quad core etc - as above, you don't add it up. Four cores are better than one and can help massively, depending on the task being done, and whether all the software is programmed to take advantage.
Think of a processor as a car. The task is to transport 8 people. The car can do 70mph. It'll do the task at 70, but it'll have to make 2 trips. If it's a dual core processor, 2 cars, they still go at 70, but it's taken half the time.

securityguy

"Will go for higher GHZ machine and maybe less GB of memory"

For the vast majority of workloads, RAM is king, closely followed by disk performance (SSD being the best). Workloads which are CPU-bound exist, obviously (rendering, some gaming, bitcoin mining, although in all cases these days a lot of it is off-loaded on a GPU) but a machine which can saturate a modern CPU (ie, which doesn't run out of I/O bandwidth or processor to memory bandwidth first) on real-world workloads in very unusual.

kwikbreaks

Ignoring everything about PC performance and just talking about processor speed.

The GHz rating is just the system clock speed. Modern processors require less clock ticks to get a given unit of work done than older processors. You can't compare processors by just looking at their clock speed if they are different architectures.

You can make a rough comparison by looking at the Passmark performance rating numbers from the site I mentioned before - http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Here you will see that your I3 @2.4GHz has a passmark of 2768
but this 3.3GHz Intel Celeron scores only 358
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+3.33GHz&id=649

Strider590

It's like saying that sticking 2 x 200mph, 300bhp sports cars together, will give you a 400mph super car.
What you actually have is a 200mph, 600bhp super car.

InsideInsurance

Strider590 wrote: »

It's like saying that sticking 2 x 200mph, 300bhp sports cars together, will give you a 400mph super car.
What you actually have is a 200mph, 600bhp super car.

Just like computers, what you actually get will depend on more factors of how they've been joined together and what you are asking them to do. Its not as simple as saying either a 400mph car or a 200mph car

Grumpysally

JJ_Egan wrote: »

Memory/ RAM more rather than less .
A 3.06 machine even single core should not crawl .

DD will only fill it full of junk anyway.
Thats why its crawling i guess .

DD won't use the PC she says it's too slow

Grumpysally

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

That's nothing to do with that (very high) processor speed. It just needs cleaning out, if you want to continue with XP. Or put Linux on it and it will fly, and you'll still be able to do most of what you could with XP (using WINE).

That's the plan.

bod1467

AlisonW wrote: »

DD won't use the PC she says it's too slow

I think JJ was meaning about the new computer.

If the data is backed up from the old computer and the computer is then factory reset you'll probably find it will still be easily fast enough for DD. (It won't be "cool" and "new" though)

RobTang

Raw GHZ has be pretty meaningless in the normal consumer space for at least a decade now... Its best to lookup a benchmark site.


Just to add some confusion, some Intel processors have a Turbo Boost mode as well, its like a dynamic overclock and allows process to run at a higher frequency but it normally need to disable 1 or more of its cores to achieve it.
As I said its best to look at the benchmarks...

System

Hi

The higher the number of cores is usually the better.

Since to increase the speed is now more than 6 billion dollars per cpu production facility, you need to set up a new fab plant and lithography etc etc, grouping up processors is a good way to improve performance.

So on a chip you get 2 or 4 or 8 or whatever, but they generate heat that kills their efficiency, so for word processing perhaps only 1 processor is coupled up. Spreadsheets (see below)


AAAAnd you use more battery power in a laptop, so the use of 1 core is considered to be good practice. High end servers might use quad core and lots of air-conditioning.

So as has been said pure speed in GHZis not always the the best way. Multi-threading and more operations per cycle is the best use of a single processor.