SurfiOnline

There’s an interesting article on CoolTechZone called “Debugging the Megahertz Myth“. Afew of my friends keep bringing up that its all about how many megahertz or gigahertz your computer is thats the deciding factor on speed. Whilst its partially true, its also one big.. fat… hairy (somehow) [b]LIE![/b].

Lets take a look at afew facts from the article..
[quote]Just before the dawn of the 21st century, Intel announced its release of the Pentium 4 processor. The initial processors were clocked at 1.4 and 1.5GHz. Similarly clocked Athlons still performed competitively with the Pentium 4 line, but it was obvious that Intel clearly didn’t want AMD to interfere with the scales. The Pentium 4 line grew as 2001 came along and Intel ramped up the processor clocks leaving AMD behind at 1.4GHz. AMD seemed to focus more on the value market as it released the 1.0GHz Duron processor instead of pursuing the quickly accelerating Pentium 4 processors which hit 2.0GHz in August of 2001. This wasn’t entirely true, as the 1.4GHz Athlon processor excelled in several benchmarks over the higher clocked Pentium 4 1.8GHz CPUs. With a 400MHz difference, it is obvious that the clock (CPU frequency) doesn’t always determine whether or not a microprocessor will perform better compared to another. This became even more noticeable as gigahertz differences between processors still showed comparable results in performance with the Athlon XP and the Pentium 4 CPUs.[/quote]

[quote]Realizing the negative image normal consumers would receive from seeing lower clocked processors, AMD switched the nomenclature system of its microprocessors to more of a comparison rating. Thus, 1.67GHz Athlon XP “2000+” processors were to perform similarly to 2.0GHz Pentium 4s, overall. As it turned out, Athlon XP processors of even lower ratings (e.g.: “2500+” vs. 2.8GHz P4) outperformed the competition in many benchmarks.[/quote]

[quote]You must never look only at the combined GHz and MHz ratings of a particular microprocessor, but instead, should compare the number of clock cycles per second (GHz/MHz) with the IPC and architecture in order to make a decision of purchase.[/quote]

So leave me and my AMD systems alone, because chances are they will outperform you and your little Intel processor any day, any time, and in any place. Hush boy, its life!