I get asked in classes on Improving PC Performance about CPU speed. With new brand names coming out from Intel and AMD (the two makers of most PC and MAC CPU's) it's getting harder and harder to compare what you have now with what you're thinking of buying, and to comparison shop by price between two or more computers.
Benchmarking is a way to compare two CPU's to each other and come up with an impartial
performance number. There are a number of industry standard benchmarks that will produce a performance number that a consumer can use to compare relative performance of one CPU to another.
The process is simple, a third party (not the CPU maker) creates a set of calculations for the CPU to run and gets the results. Each CPU tested is given the benchmark performance number and usually charted so you can see if a CPU is faster or slower than others that have been benchmarked.
One good site that benchmarks CPU's is Passmark's software site, where common CPU's that people are likely to buy are listed and ranked. The oldest CPU listed is a Pentium 4 2Ghz model with a rating of 254. A CPU with a rating of 500 would be about twice as fast, with 1000 would be 4 times as fast, etc.
This site gives you a way to compare what you might buy with what you have now, or to compate 2 computers to each other. The average laptop or desktop at $500 has a pretty powerful CPU which is more than adequate for most applications other than games and graphics.
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