What determines the speed/power of a processor?

[huggles12]

Hi there, just a quick question.

What determines the speed/power of a processor?

For example, everybody says intel are better.

So what separates a an i5 3570k quad core at 3.4ghz from a Phenom II quad core at 3.4ghz?

Shouldn't they be almost the same? How does the architecture make that much of an improvement?

Hope this isn't a stupid question.

Cheers.

 

[whatismyproblem]

Intel's core microarchitecture is more efficient than AMD

in the i5 vs Phenom ii example the i5 has better L3 cache

 

[jaguarskx]

See my posts in the following thread

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/344860-28-whats-8150-3570k

 

[huggles12]

Great, thanks jaguarskx.

Another question. Can and where do I view the figures for Instructions Per Cycle? I've looked on the intel and AMD website and I'm unable to find information to compare the IPC of each processor.

 

[huggles12]

Okay, after some research I have found this wikipedia page on instructions per second

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_instructions_per_second#Million_instructions_per_second

There's a table that shows MIPS / Clock Cycles Per Second / Cores Per Die

It has the i7 2600k at 9.43
AMD Phenon X4 940 Black Edition at 3.5

9.43 / 3.5 = 2.7

Does that mean the 2600k is 2.7 times faster? Or am I looking at the numbers too simplistically?

 

[whatismyproblem]

Okay, after some research I have found this wikipedia page on instructions per second

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_instructions_per_second#Million_instructions_per_second

There's a table that shows MIPS / Clock Cycles Per Second / Cores Per Die

It has the i7 2600k at 9.43
AMD Phenon X4 940 Black Edition at 3.5

9.43 / 3.5 = 2.7

Does that mean the 2600k is 2.7 times faster? Or am I looking at the numbers too simplistically?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth

this might help