How do you tell the difference between processors?

Question

It used to be somewhat easy..

A Pentium 4 was better than a 3.

A 1.2Ghz was slower than a 2.5Ghz

Now with all this Core dou 2 dou Core crap I have no idea what's what. They don't even list speeds anymore. Help!

Answer 1

you are right it used to be easy, then they came with the Pentium M series, and people think it is bette than the P4, will a Pentium M is a pentium mobile (a sub brand of pentium 4) so actually there are traditional P4 better than the Pentium M, then came the Pentium D, that is just Pentium 4 (flavour Desktop) means less concern for heating and power consumption, but then its still a P4, so just check the L2 cache, and speed and choose the best. but then now they have introduced the Core duo, and Core 2 duo, and now Quad Core 2 duo, well a core duo means two processor cores on One dye, in simple terms two processors in one, so that they share the work in some (complex) way, and also have their L2 cache combined so you realize that th Core duo's have higher L2 cache than most processor brands,
some how the Core duo's are better than any processor on the market, because a core duo of 1.2 Ghz compared to a P4 of 2.0 Ghz, now realise that the core duo is 2 cores, so we are talking of 1.2 x 2 independent cores which is 2.4 Ghz combined, with a L2 cache of 4Mb, whiles that of the p4 would have been 2Mb or less. so then the core duo would perform much better, then the core 2 duo, is much like the core duo, but now consider it at 2 cores on 2 dyes in one processor, so it is essentially having much L2 cache and much better piping and speed.
then came the quad core 2 duo. that my friend is 4 cores on 4 dyes one processor, in other words 4 in one. that is really much power ful if you follow my explanation from above. finally there are the core duo extremes which are more powerful than the core duo's so the quad core 2 duo extreme currently the most powerful processor on the planet, for PC.
to get a full and detailed list of processor power, go to intels website and they will give you a detailed list of processors and their power, including their speed (which nowadays is much useless compared to the core 2 duo, core duo and quad core 2 duo extremes you just dont want to know their speed, example the quad core 2 duo extreme i have is a 3.4 Ghz, which 2MB L2 cache, which is 13.6 GHZ at 8 MB L2 cache, now after parrallel computing 4 of those in four different computers i have such a powerfull pc that i dont even know what to do with it that will make it slow down.

Answer 2

i fully understand your chaos
now, if you recall, there used a celeron too alongside & which was much cheaper than the equivalent pentium

the key word now is ipc or instructions per cycle
actually work done per clock cycle
this has increased tremendously, thereby rendering the concept of higher & higher clock speeds redundant

other factors like core architecture, cache & other developments have aided in process

without going into much bla bla., actual tool used to measure performances is benchmarking., where the processors are put to test & a table made out for the different processors > where you can also put in your application & check side by side

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html

and the intel core 2 duo are leading the pack
< and yes clock speeds are very much specified for each processor, as also the fsb & l2 cache >
these are the very processors that knocked the daylight out of amd, as you see from the benchmark link above

i answered a similar question some time back & think it should interest you
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Al.oY29hkynZG4MfblTxTbnty6IX?qid=20070726072246AA0REal&show=7#profile-info-sXCCvWJPaa

Answer 3

there should be a part number on it just do a search on that part number the cores are just how many it has so if it's a duo it's like having 2 cpu's in it instead of 1 they also have quad cores now so that's like having 4 cpu's on board

Answer 4

2nd is greater suitable. the 2nd ability each and every time it desires to apply over 50% CPU utilization, yet another 3Ghz center will kick in to help ease on the CPU load. think of of it as a 6GHz CPU, yet purely once you initiate pumping out this is juice.