Conclusion
I hope that this article underlined precisely that processor clock is not the Holy Grail at all. Many discounters are still selling high-end systems , based on AMD and Intel CPUs beyond 1 GHz, in combination with antiquated graphics cards like a NVIDIA TNT2/Ultra or Vanta, which is definitely the wrong way to keep costs down - even though high processor speeds may sound very attractive.
If you belong to the group of those users who want best 3D performance, you should set highest value on the graphics card. The second issue that you should pay attention to is a high FSB speed: I personally would only purchase systems/components with 133 MHz FSB (both Pentium III and Athlon), since you could waste the potential of modern processors at high core clock speeds.
Another group of people uses their computers for Internet browsing, office applications and rarely for games. Those people definitely do neither need a fast 64 MB graphics card nor a GHz processor.
Lately, microprocessors are dropping their prices much faster than graphics cards, making the investment of e.g. $ 300 into a high-end graphics card more sensible than the purchase of a fast processor. Spending a lot of money for a fast processor is more of a status symbol rather than a clever purchase.
Finally the trend is going into a clear direction. Processors with 1 GHz provide enough performance for most people, and we don't expect that to change substantially within the next 12 months.
My outlook for power users is as follows: With a reasonable amount of RAM, the Windows performance is no matter of discussion anyway. Thus the 3D performance becomes the important factor. If your system should be too slow for certain 3D applications, just replace the graphics card with a faster model instead of throwing away the whole system. As of late, new-generation 3D-chips offer significantly larger performance gains than new microprocessors.
