CPU question
I was wondering if anybody knows how they compare CPU speeds. What if an ad says, "Intel's new processor can do computatons which other processors aren't capable of. It's not even possible to simulate what it'll do." This kind of claim sounds fishy. But I'm not sure why. It makes me think, though, of how some processors have not only different speeds but also different kinds of instructions that can affect the speed of a given series of tasks.
Thx. -Li Minh
http://www.sisoftware.co.uk
Download "Sandra" itt'l allow you to benchmark your CPU, and compare it against others.
They are compared mainly with their Front Side Bus, internal caches, and their overall clock speed. Length of pipelines are also considered for overclocking, but mainly they just say "The new P4 2.8 GHZ with 512K cache." Although AMD has recently been saying that clock speed isn't everything and have been naming their Athlon XP's 2600"+". I don't know why they call it a "+" when it clocks at around 2.2 GHZ. Supposedly it can outperform the P4 2.6 even though the P4 has a 533 FSB and the Athlon has a 333...anyways, I've got a P4
//napKIN
----------->>All Hail John Carmack<<---------------
Great! Thanks for the replies! But I still wonder what it means when they say "you can't simulate." One of my friends said something like that to me and I had no idea how to interpret it.
Theres buzz around intel, apparently they broke the 3ghz mark. I say about time because Toms Hardware guide took a Pentium 4 2.2 NORTHWOOD processor to 3.10GHZ with liquid cooling about 4 days after they came out, and it was stable.
