Tue, 30 Mar 2004

Good Riddance, Gigahertz

And it's about damn time, too. My 887 MHz "Big Mac" is demonstrably faster than my 1.2 GHz PC - and it has little or nothing to do with the speed of the processor, and everything to do with the bus speed and the operating and file systems.

The downside, as the article points out, is that the lack of a single number to compare computer speeds means consumers will have to really understand things to get the best deal. Or that somebody will have to design a relevent, cross-platform benchmark that will give an reasonable estimate of a computer's performance.

Hmmm.. this may be a business opportunity!

Computer chipmakers finally drop gigahertz figures, used to measure processor speeds, from their marketing plans. They are irrelevant. But now, customers have to dig a little deeper to find the best computer for their needs. By Amit Asaravala.

(link) [Wired News]

/Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

comment...

 
Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.
 
 Name:
 URL:(optional)
 Title: (optional)
 Comments:  
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time