random 27 Jan 2007 12:20 pm
Megahertz myth
Megahertz myth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The future of the myth
Ironically, Intel is now having to dig itself out of a marketing hole it created for itself when it released the Pentium 4. Their new generation of chips, the Intel Core 2, has clock speeds of around 2-3 GHz. While the Core line is a breakthrough in terms of performance-per-watt, its low clock speed when compared to late generation Pentium 4s (rated at upwards of 3.5 GHz) is likely to cause some marketing confusion. Intel is now in the position of trying to sell consumers processors with lower gigahertz ratings, having spent the better part of the last five years telling consumers that slower clock speed denotes inferiority.
This can also cause problems for third party manufacturers. For example, Panasonic lists a Pentium 4-based machine running at 3 GHz as the minimum system requirement for their soon to be released Blu-ray Disc drives. A 1.8 GHz Core Duo is significantly faster than the 3 GHz Pentium 4, but to some consumers reading specifications on the side of a box this statement can be completely confusing.