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More for lessJan 05 '02 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Megahertz isn't everything. Do your research before buying a system, and find out which chip performs better for applications you commonly run on it.
I'm gonna address one thing in this advice column, the megahertz myth. Intel knows about it, AMD knows about it, and Apple knows about it. It's the myth that the higher the clock speed, the better the chip. This myth has been perpetuated by Intel for a long time to prove that their products were better than Apple's. (Motorola's chips.) Then, AMD took this and ran with it. Now, Intel is back in the driver's seat with their latest Pentium 4 chip, and once again, both AMD and Apple are fighting to show that megahertz doesn't matter. Why doesn't it? Because megahertz is simply a measure of how fast a chip runs its internal clock at. It says nothing about how much work that a chip can get done per clock cycle. This is known as instructions per clock, or IPC. That's right, a chip can do more than one thing per clock cycle. Apple(motorola) and AMD have higher IPC's than Intel right now. In fact, Intel built their latest chip to scale to the highest clock frequencies by giving it very deep pipelines. These pipelines allow a processor to scale higher. They can also add to the IPC, but the deeper the pipeline, the higher the penalty that is imposed when something goes wrong in a pipeline. (For advanced readers, an example of this problem is the branch misprediction.) The penalty is because the whole pipeline must be cleared out, causing the chip to waste the work that it was doing, resulting in a chip that gets less work done. So, in short, megahertz is not the best indicator of chip worth. There are other factors to consider. Right now, AMD and Intel have about the same performing chips, regardless of the megahertz difference. Since these factors are equal, I would look at other factors, such as cost. AMD chips are substantially cheaper now. Since I can't see into the future, I can't tell you what will be the winner in a few months. When you purchase your system, always research. A lot of salesmen don't understand these basic concepts and are paid more to sell one kind of system or another. Look online for reviews of a particular processor. Just be a smart consumer and don't be caught by claims of higher megahertz, unless the chip also performs better. (By AMD chips, I am referring to AMD Athlon and later, not the K6 and earlier.)  |
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