Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Martial33 operating at a frequency of 3ghz -- or does it work like a racecar? eg just because you have 500horsepower, doesn’t necessarily mean that is being transferred to the road... |
A better race car analogy would be thinking of
GHz as
RPM.
The RPM of an engine is only enough information to give you a
relative idea of it's power output. Engine "X" running at 3,000RPM is more powerful than the same engine running at 2,000 RPM. Unless you know lots of other info (number of cylinders, gear ratios, etc) you'll have no idea if it is as powerful as engine "Y" at 4,000 RPM.
Back to your CPU - a Core 2 Duo or Athlon 64 does more work per clock cycle than a Pentium 4, so a Core 2 Duo at 2 GHz may be substantially more powerful than a Pentium 4 at 3 GHz. This could be related to a 6 cyl car vs a 8 cyl.
I'm sure other members could illustrate some additional scenarios far better than I, but this should point you in the right direction....