That’s because of changes to their architecture, rather than boosts in raw clock speed and core count. Once we hit 3+ GHz as a commonplace standard over a decade ago, progress on that front has slowed down.īut processors have gotten pretty fast, too. While we are starting to see some higher clocks push 4 and 5 GHz on consumer processors, this has only started happening in the past few years. Here’s a twist, though: Clock speeds…haven’t changed that much in the past decade. It’s also worth noting that not all processors can overclock, only the ones with -K at the end can… you’ll also need a compatible motherboard. This is recommended only for enthusiasts, though, as it can result in overheating and instability (and then a bunch of troubleshooting) if you don’t manage it properly. Some processors may also support overclocking, which allows the user to increase clock speed themselves.

Or, at least, the top speed– clock speed will often dynamically reduce when the system gets too hot, or the higher speeds simply aren’t needed (ie during common desktop tasks). Short version: it measures the speed, in Gigahertz, of your processor cores.

These are tasks that have heavy CPU requirements and benefit greatly from powerful, multi-threaded processors.Ĭlock speed is one of the most-marketed specs in a processor, but… what does it actually mean? The main reason to get a processor with more cores or threads today is for purposes like live-streaming your gameplay or rendering video. Very few modern games can meaningfully utilize more than that, though as time goes on, that will likely change. In gaming terms, you generally don’t need any more than 4 strong cores for acceptable gaming performance. This usually happens without any meaningful loss in performance, and so it effectively doubles the processor’s power… at least when used in applications optimized to utilize multiple threads. With SMT (called Hyperthreading (HT) by Intel) enabled, there can now be two virtual threads per physical core. With the debut of SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) technology, however, a distinction arose. In the past, threads and cores were completely 1:1 in any given system, so the distinction between the two didn’t matter much. A thread is essentially a virtual core, or how the operating system sees your physical core.

Intel core i5 2400 vs i5 3470 vs i7 860