confused about quality of processors' performance...

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aksdeo

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Feb 8, 2014
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Upon which attribute the performance and quality of processors actually dependent?
Is it dependent on Generation viz. p4, dual core, core 2 duo, i3, i5, i7...? OR
Is it dependent on clock speed viz. 2.44 GHz, 3.GHz...?
I observed a funny thing that there was a i5 processor with 2.44 GHz whereas one was core 2 duo processor with 3.0 GHz.... so which is better among them...?
 
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jnewegger23
It used to be pretty simple that the cpu with the higher GHz was the faster one but everything changed after the first dual core processors came into the picture. So a dual core at 1.8GHz outperformed a single core 2.4GHz and that made sense because you had two cores at lower speeds doing work versus the one core going faster but working by itself. As Robert mentioned a lot of other factors like caching, algorithms etc come into play. The easiest way to know now is to look up benchmark data but even that can be deceiving as "top speed" isn't always an indicator of handling but you need simple. So, the easiest thing to do is compare within generations. So an i3 is slower than an i5 and an i7 is faster typically. You have to pay...
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Robert Pankiw

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Mar 26, 2012
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There are a lot of technical things that affect the performance of a processor.
Generation matters a lot, when looking at several generations at a time. The reason is that there is a lot of algorithms working behind the scene to do all sorts of things, like caching of data. Another big deal is the number of processing cores, and if the software you want to run uses more than 2.

Clock speed is really important too. If an older CPU is running at 3.0Ghz, and the new generation is 10% faster, but clocked at 2.44Ghz, it would be as if the older one were running at 2.68Ghz. These are just example data, totally made up. It could be that the new generation is 30% faster, making it equivalent to a 3.17Ghz older processor (from a multi generation jump, still made up data). Without knowing specifics about the processors you are referring to, I can't actually help any more than that, and that wasn't much help.
 
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jnewegger23

jnewegger23

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Aug 13, 2013
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It used to be pretty simple that the cpu with the higher GHz was the faster one but everything changed after the first dual core processors came into the picture. So a dual core at 1.8GHz outperformed a single core 2.4GHz and that made sense because you had two cores at lower speeds doing work versus the one core going faster but working by itself. As Robert mentioned a lot of other factors like caching, algorithms etc come into play. The easiest way to know now is to look up benchmark data but even that can be deceiving as "top speed" isn't always an indicator of handling but you need simple. So, the easiest thing to do is compare within generations. So an i3 is slower than an i5 and an i7 is faster typically. You have to pay attention to the number of cores now at 2, 4, 6 and for AMD even 8 or more. Narrow it down to two similar cpus and get opinions of others who own them when you get that close to choosing. Typically newer is better but the newest processors have been running hotter so if you plan on putting it into a poorly ventilated case keep this in mind as cooling and air flow has become all the more important.
To summarize Generation>Cores>Ghz. Well, of course an Ivy i7 is still faster than a Haswell i3 clearly so you should know that I mean that a 4770k is faster than a 3770k and not some other tenet I did not cover. So in general, you want the latest generation that suits your needs with the most cores at the highest ghz as a rule of thumb and then compare two closely priced cpus and get experienced opinions after reading reviews with benchmarks etc. Hope that helps!
 
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