

In other words, the particular architecture of the CPU itself matters more than the clock speed.ĪMD's FX (Bulldozer) CPUs also follows the aforementioned Pentium 4 (NetBurst) example, which has the same issue that the NetBurst-derived CPUs suffer from. This improves the amount of instructions it can output per cycle, which means better performance at a lower clock speed. Even though the Pentium D 940 is clocked significantly higher, the Core 2 Duo E6600 is still faster due to the reduced amount of pipeline stages and a wider execution unit. For example, a Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4 GHz will nearly always outperform a Pentium D 940 3.2 GHz. While it is true that a high clock speed is one of the main factors for good CPU performance, it is not always the sole determining factor. However, it is true that a higher CPU clock speed guarantees improved emulation performance. This is usually a common misconception, that stems from lack of detailed information on how a CPU works. Whenever a CPU has a high clock speed (e.g: Pentium 4 580 4 GHz), it does not always necessarily mean that it is powerful.
