Understanding computer speed was easy in the 1990's (850mhz; 1.2ghz, 2.7ghz, etc). But, now it is very?

Question

confusing and complicated. If computer speeds today had continued to be rated in the simple, linear fashion that they were in the 1990's, about how fast would today's computers be in ghz? Computer clock speeds stopped increasing a few years ago and stopped at around 3.6ghz. Would today's computers (rated this way) be 8, 9 10ghz, or more?

Answer 1

yea maybe 6ghz but u got to remeber u got HT, duel cores and stuff well duel cores and HT thats like it have double the speed and wit muiti task which is like the same...but u can do much more and it won't lagg....and the higher GHz it goes the more u'll need in a power supply soo more power usage

Answer 2

Not sure what you mean exactly.

Yes, I do understand your point about how the speed of the CPU mattered the most years ago. An 800MHz Pentium III performed much like an 800MHz Athlon. Very simple back then.

However, when Intel released the Pentium 4, things changed. The 1.4GHz P4 barely outperformed a 1GHz Athlon. Within 2 years, AMD found itself way behind Intel in terms of GHz, but their CPUs were performing just as well. Therefore to avoid the speed myth that Intel was banking on, AMD decided to use a performance rating scheme instead of listing the actual MHz.

It actually made sense for them to make the move but the rating system was confusing to some, I agree with that.

I'm not sure, however, what you mean by CPUs today would be rated at 8, 9, or 10 GHz. No, the speed rating must reflect the "ACTUAL" speed of the CPU. That's why there's a GHz in the speed rating. You can't say you have a 10GHz CPU when it only runs at 3.6GHz.

Clock speeds stopped increasing because CPU's were sucking up too much power and running really hot. Intel recently went backwards and released the new Core 2 Duo. When I say backwards, I mean they modified the Pentium III/M architecture and released a slower CPU that could outperform any Pentium 4. A 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, for example, can easily outperform a 3.6GHz P4.

AMD, for the record, is still increasing in speed. It hasn't stopped at all.

Answer 3

The processor speed has stoped increasing in a linear way because we have reached the limits the materials ability in the way of speed (ie electrons can only move so fast on a copper wire).

These days are the days of parallel operation, from the simulation of a dule core processor found in hyperthreading technology, to true dule core processors, this trend will continue, so these days its not how fast the processor is but how parallel is is...

Answer 4

Now a days there are lots of varieties. we can select from a regular, dual core and many other CPUs.

Answer 5

thats a good question! llooll