Why are one manufacturer's processors faster than another - even at the same GHz?

I've done some of my own research on this, and here's what I have come up with. Up until recently, people would gauge their processor’s speed based on the GHz measurement: A 2.8 GHz processor is faster than a 2.4GHz processor. That is still true today, but there is an understanding in the processor market that the potential to increase the number of GHz a processor can stand is about to top out. The GHz limit is unknown, somewhere around 5… but once that limit is reached, the processor will not physically be able to withstand anything higher. Processor companies are looking for other ways to increase speed. Intel has always been the top dog, and until recently, they used the GHz measurement as the model number for their chips, so we're just used to judging procs based on that number, even though it's one of many ways to measure the different components that make up the speed of the processor.

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We now have dual core processors, simply put, thats two processors built into the same chip(lots of expensive & complicated circuitry). So maybe the days of the race to make the fasted processor based on GHz is over, we may see increase in the number of cores :)

Processor speed (measured in GHz) is only meaningful when comparing to other processors with the same architecture. For the past few generations, AMD and Intel processors have used fairly different internal mechanics to do the work. So, comparing GHz between an Intel Pentium 4 and an AMD Athlon64 is like comparing apples to oranges, they are just not directly comparable. AMD uses numbers like 4000+ to give you an idea of what the comparable Intel Processor speed would be, however Intel has recently stopped using MHz measurements entirely in their processor line, instead calling them the model 814 for example.

Where you said: "I try to look at the total picture ... cost, disk capacity & speed, network bandwidth, memory usage and capacity, my expectations for video performance ... and somewhere in the middle of all that ... processor speed," you left out a critical point. These days you have to start factoring in the cost of electrical power. At the rate these costs are rising, this will soon become a significant issue.

Well put, Robert. That is so important nowadays. I work in a dedicated hosting environment, so it matters a lot to my company, but not so much to the customer. We want to have the highest end procs, and power consumption is a large part of the decision making process. We figure that out, roll it into the cost of the machine (along with a thousand other factors) and there's the monthly price.

I think processor technology is going to get insanely interesting in the next few months.

I'd like to know from an expert why everybody thinks AMD processors are faster than Intel's. Does AMD really have different speeds than they say they do? Because everybody says the AMD FX-60 (2.6GHz) is faster than the Intel Pentium 4 (3.8GHz). Is it because the AMD processor has faster front bus speeds? Please tell me someone. Thank you!

To summerize it AMD does does not have a FSB. It has what is called a deticated memory bus which is built directly into the core. This greatly increases speed. Secondly AMD chips do more processes per clock. Last of all I dont know how people got the idea that you cant have a processor exceed 5ghz. My other comuter is stable at 14ghz. I have whats called phase change cooling. The reason most people cant overclock their computer that much is because of heat. Your CPU gets hot enough to cook on. When you overclock it, it gets hotter. More energy more heat.