[Hantra]

This is an interesting article on Intel's new marketing strategy for CPU's.  Seems they are going away from chip speed marketing.

Intel Renaming Chips

[Thump553]

Smart move.  AMD got away with going to their inflated "performance-based" naming system quite a while ago.

Frankly, CPU speed barely matters at all any more to most applications.  The two main computers I use are (1) a 1.4 AMD T-BIrd with an excellent video card (Radeon 9700) and (2) an Intel 2.4 2.66 with the standard Dell video.  Real life performance wise, their is only minimal differences between these two computers.  Things like the video card and hard drive system are much more important to real life performance these days.

[Rob Babcock]

Probably not a bad idea, although I sorta liked the old naming system.

[EchiDna]

imho, AMD was leaveraging their performance advantage against intel's clock speed naming system... check the benchmarks, they perform about the same based on the current naming protocols... I think it was just wonderful marketing by AMD and a slow uptake by Intel that their system was being used to AMD's advantage.

at the end of the day though, I'm inclined to agree with Thump553... the latest generation hardware is miles in front of what all but the most power hungry user needs. I still use an athlon 1.4 gHz with 512 mb ram for photo and video editing and it does the job admirably for my (admittedly only amateur) requirements.

I must admit I'm feeling the need for an upgrade soon though! atm it is so cheap for a quality motherboard with plenty of ram and a nice new p4