At what point is there a noticeable difference between 2.0 ghz and 2.4 ghz?

[amitface]

What applications, tasks, etc should one be doing to be able to notice that a 2.4 ghz is faster than a 2.0? I'm under the impression that getting a 2.4 ghz PC is unnecessary for anyone not searching for the newest prime number, making movies, or gaming. (is it even that necessary for gaming? I don't know. I don't game)

Please shed some light on this topic, as it could save me (and others) some $$$.

[thegsrguy]

CPU speed is only part of the equation. There are other factors like bus speed, cache size, etc.

[thegsrguy]

Which CPUs are you looking at specifically?

Many people prefer to start with a cheaper slower one, add a cheap (improved) cooling solution, and then just overclock it.

[amitface]

I'm specifically talking about the Santa Rose CPUs that are out right now.

[thegsrguy]

The bigger cache will be somewhat noticeable for anything CPU-intensive. Everyday tasks won't see much of an improvement.

[lupin..the..3rd]

What applications, tasks, etc should one be doing to be able to notice that a 2.4 ghz is faster than a 2.0? I'm under the impression that getting a 2.4 ghz PC is unnecessary for anyone not searching for the newest prime number, making movies, or gaming. (is it even that necessary for gaming? I don't know. I don't game)

Please shed some light on this topic, as it could save me (and others) some $$$.

I think you answered your own question there. The point that you need a 2.4 Ghz instead of a 2.0 Ghz is when the application you're running is CPU-bound.

Prime number searching and gaming are both CPU-bound. Making movies is CPU-bound and/or IO-bound.

For general desktop tasks like browsing the web, email, listing to mp3's, instant messaging, word processing, etc. You will not notice much difference at all between 2.0 and 2.4 simply because your applications don't demand it. If this is your intended use, save yourself a few $$$ and get the 2.0.

[calaveras]

Couche Wouche

[who8mahrice]

gaming are both CPU-bound.

Uh...Gaming's GPU bound the majority of the time...

[lupin..the..3rd]

Uh...Gaming's GPU bound the majority of the time...

Only at very high frame rates. You're saying that if we ran gaming benchmarks on a machine, all things being equal, the 2.0 Ghz would get the exact same FPS as the 2.4 Ghz?

[John Ratsey]

In theory, the 2.4GHz CPU is 20% faster than 2GHz. If you are doing something which takes tens of seconds or minutes and fully loads the CPU then it will finish sooner (eg 50 seconds instead of a minute). You will notice that if you use a stop watch, but without the stopwatch it will seem to be the same time. But if the CPU is not the bottleneck for whatever you are running then you may not measure any improvement at all. The PCMark05 benchmark, although a couple of years old, probably gives a reasonable overall indication of the difference in performance between different hardware setups. However, the summary results in reviews usually only shown the CPU / GPU and don't mention the RAM and HDD.

John