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hoodrat Veteran user Southern California 388 Posts |
Is a 2.17 GHz processor better than a 750 MHz processor? I don't know much about computers, but wanted to know the answer to this question. Thanks.
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hkwiles Special user Howard Wiles 797 Posts |
One would assume so, depends what else you have on the system, Memory size of Ram etc,
"2.7GHz is the speed at which the Processor runs. So in theory it is running nearly 3x the 750 Mhz Howard |
drwilson Inner circle Bar Harbor, ME 2191 Posts |
You also have to think about whether you are comparing apples and oranges. When the PowerPC chip (for the Mac) first came out, it had a significantly lower clock speed that the CPU chip in top-of-the-line PCs. However, the performance of the Mac for some tasks was significantly better than for the PC. Such tasks included rotating or resizing large images in PhotoShop. In baby talk (which is about the level that I understand with respect to building processors), you can imagine that there is a pipeline through which instructions pass. At each clock cycle, an instruction moves one step through the pipeline. One of the reasons that the PowerPC was faster was that the pipeline was "shorter." If there is a "bubble" in the pipeline (no instruction) it has to clear the pipeline before you can feed it again. A shorter pipeline clears faster. The PowerPC is also RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing), meaning that there are fewer commands that the processor can follow. The Intel chips had a larger number of possible instructions, some of which could not be executed quickly.
Now watch some engineer come along with a real explanation. The trick is to make it comprehensible. Yours, Paul |
hkwiles Special user Howard Wiles 797 Posts |
Ha Ha ..I like it Paul..I've a Degree in Electronics..took me 12 months to realise
you don't get rich being a engineer..moved in to Sales and Marketing...now that's where the real Smoke and Mirror work is done. Howard |
hoodrat Veteran user Southern California 388 Posts |
Thanks for the info! I have 512 MB of RAM, and I know that is pretty good. I also have a 160 GB hard drive, which I definitely know is good. I bought my computer last January, and was just getting around to wondering about its various specifications. Guess I have a pretty powerful system in some respects.
Thanks again for answering the question about the processor size! Much appreciated! |
Hideo Kato Inner circle Tokyo 5649 Posts |
My 1 GHz Pentium M handle video images faster than my 2.2GHz Pentium.
So I use the former when I capture movies. Hideo kato |
Dorian Gray New user 6 Posts |
There are a great many variables to consider. How much RAM there is on the video card is important if you are doing things that are graphics intensive. The BUS speed and the speed of the RAM on the Motherboard also are important to the overall performance. Once you are up and running the number of TSRs (Terminate Stay Resident - programs that run in the background all the time) that are running has a great deal to do with the performance of the machine.
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RiffClown Inner circle Yorktown, Virginia (Previously Germany) 1579 Posts |
To answer your original question, yes, it does matter what you are doing with it and yes, an apple to apples comparison makes a huge difference. Unless your 750MHz is a RISC based or dedicated system, a 2.17GHz would be faster at most applications except those specifically written for the instruction set of slower speed system. A good rule of thumb is that you generally get what you pay for.
Pentium Centrinos do as much as a higher speed P4 given the same operating environment. AMD Chips are speed rated to a P equivalency. An AMD Athlon XP 2400+ for instance runs at an actual 2 GHz clock speed. MHz for MHz, a RISC based systems such as an SGI workstation can run circles around a similarly configured x86 system but tend to be specialized for certain applications and operating systems. Macs have a strong following in the multimedia arena but PC's have a greater following with mainstream businesses and provide the widest range of hardware and software choices. MS Windows, Linux, QNX, BeOS, Lindows and other Operating systems compete heavily to provide your interface to your x86 based computer while SGI and iMac are more stringent on user environment and operating systems. Dorian Gray also brings up a valid point, what you have running in the background influences your system's apparent speed immensely!
Rob "Riff, the Magical Clown" Eubank aka RiffClown
<BR>http://www.riffclown.com <BR>Magic is not the method, but the presentation. |
junkdz New user 67 Posts |
I agree with all the answers above. Would add that the rate difference between 2.17 GHz processor and 750 MHz processor is so large that it is probably no Intel/Amd/PowerPC combo in which the 750Mhz is faster or more powerful.
Montgomeryville Magician http://www.dzmagic.com Philadelphia Magician
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