Buying a computer today can be harder than buying a car. There are some many different acronyms and terms associated with computers, and all of these terms can cause a good deal of confusion. Much like the auto industry, the semiconductor industry has to figure a way out to sell more computer chips. People can always find a new commercial toting the reason why someone needs a new computer. Learn why your formulas 1000 mhz = 1 ghz is not always an important conversion when deciding to buy a computer.
MegaHertz (Mhz) or GigaHertz (Ghz)
What you should know before you buy a computer
Buying a computer today can be harder than buying a car. There are some many different acronyms and terms associated with computers, and all of these terms can cause a good deal of confusion. Much like the auto industry, the semiconductor industry has to figure a way out to sell more computer chips. People can always find a new commercial toting the reason why someone needs a new computer.
However, if one goes to a computer store, one can just look at the programs available for a computer. Many of the minumum requirements needed for a computer to run the program are stated on the side of the box. So far, the highest processor speed I have seen has been 400 Mhz. What is processor speed, and what is 400 Mhz?
Processor speed is the speed at which the clock runs in the computer processing unit. It is not a true measure of the performance of a computer. Take the anology of car engine. There are different types of car engines. Some of the car engines in Europe are much smaller than the engines in the United States. However, the horsepower and speed of the smaller engines in Europe are in many instances much greater than the larger engines in the United States. This same idea applies to computer chips. It is not always how fast the chip is running at that will determine its performance relative to another computer chip. The architecture of the chip may allow it to do things twice as fast, and it will only need have the speed to accomplish the same task.
Mhz is a short form of Megahertz or million of cycles. A hertz is a measure of how many cycle per second. Ghz or Gigahertz is a measure of billions of cycles per second. That is 1000 Megahertz (Mhz) = 1 Gigahertz (Ghz). Many of the new personal computers today measure their clock time in Ghz. You may see alot of comparisons between different processors using some value in Ghz. For a better look at hardware comparison check out the website Tom’s Hardware, you can google for it. If you want a more technical overview go to EECC 550 section at my old professor of computer architectures page at www.rit.edu.
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