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Speed of computer (GHz).

I am not sure if this question belong here or in hardware.

Anyway, I am looking for a layman explaination of GHz (example, what is the following mean: Intel® Core™ Duo Processor up to 2.0GHz) OR (Intel® Pentium® M Low Voltage processor up to 778 (1.6GHz))

Also, what is the Intel® Pentium® M Processor 760 (2GHz)...Is this better then the Intel® Core™ .

I guess what I need to know is which one is better for my buck?

Thanks.

perennial

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woodas26

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perennial

ASKER

woodas26,

Since I have already received an answer....can we just leave it here?

perennial

Callandor

GHz is the clock speed that the processor operates at. It says "up to", because they incorporate a power saving feature where the clock speed is decreased to about half to extend battery life.

The Core processors are the latest incarnation of Pentium-M cpus - the 760 is the previous generation. Core processors are very powerful, comparable to AthlonFX cpus:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2648&p=3
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=2663

Justin Collins

the Core Duo is the latest and greatest. If you are buying a laptop, I would definitely go for the Core Duo over Pentium M. I would wait until Intel Launches it's new processor line(which is at the end of July), AMD is going to drastically drop it's price on most CPU's and Im sure intel would not be far behind. Might save you a few bones.

jolly good

puter_geek

ISoul

In this day and age, just the clock speed itself is not enough to know how well a CPU performs. The only real way to know nowadays is to find review sites that benchmark CPU's.

With there being SO many CPU models available in the market, it's pretty much impossible to find a truly comprehensive comparison of them all...

But here's a pretty decent one:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html

netsmithcentral

The Mhz/Ghz rating of a computer mesures the number of clock cycles a computer goes through (in millions of cycles per second or billions of cycles per second). This does not directly give you the speed of the computer. Intel widely marketed a higher clock speed as being the single best way to increase performance because most of their consumers understood (or thougth they did) what Mhz was.

A more accurate description of speed is Performance = Opertaions per Cycle (ICU) * Clock Speed (Ghz). That's why, for example, a Pentium M @ 1.5 Ghz can outperform a Pentium 4 @ 3.2 Ghz. It's also why Motorola processors in Apple computers traditionally perform at or above PC levels with much lower clock speeds.