Quote:
Originally Posted by cody
I posted that at the same time as you posted. It was in reference to learning that my new dual core 1.7 isn't going to be as fast as a P4 3.4.  |
Don't worry, the Core 2 duo processor will be faster.
I had to edit one of my posts to add clarity. Comparing two families of processors based on clock speed alone is tough.
For the most part, your processor is idle 99% of the time. Clock speed only measures how fast the processor can calculate something, but has nothing to do with the efficiency of the system as a whole. Intel has started improving other areas to speed up the overall performance of the whole system.
Thankfully the mega/gigahertz war has finally gone away as it was really starting to overshadow development in other areas. But its one of those things where most consumers say "I don't know what that number means, but I definitely need more of it" and so Intel and AMD kept pushing out chips with higher and higher clock speeds.