A whole generation of computer users has already grown up who did not find the famous "megahertz race" that unfolded between the two leading manufacturers of central processors for desktop computers (who do not know - Intel and AMD) at the turn of the millennium. Its end came around 2004, when it became apparent that the frequency of the processor is not the only characteristic affecting its performance. The extremely “gluttonous” and extremely high-frequency Pentium IV processors on the Prescott core came close to 4 GHz, and at the same time they hardly competed with the K8 architecture, on which the new “stones” from AMD were built, having a frequency of no higher than 2.6-2, 8 GHz.
After that, both manufacturers synchronously moved away from the practice of identifying their products by operating frequency and switched to abstract model indices. This decision was justified by the reluctance to mislead the end user about processor performance, focusing on only one of its characteristics. Indeed, there is also the processor bus frequency, the size of the cache memory, the technological process by which the core is made, and much more. But the processor frequency is still one of the most visual and intuitive for most people measuring the "quality" of the CPU.
The processor clock speed , indeed, affects its performance, characterizing the number of operations performed per second. But the fact is that processors built on different cores spend a different number of clock cycles on a single operation, and this parameter can differ significantly from generation to generation. Thanks to this, the current processor with a nominal frequency of 2.0 GHz will leave far behind the flagship seven years ago with a clock frequency of 3.8 GHz. In addition, the processor speed, as already mentioned above, is affected by the size of the cache memory (the larger it is, the less often the processor will be forced to access relatively slow RAM) and the processor bus frequency (the higher it is, the faster the data exchange will be between the "stone" and RAM), and many other, not so noticeable, but no less important, characteristics.
Recently, a concept such as the maximum processor frequency has also come into use.
Gradually, both Intel and AMD introduce a feature such as auto-acceleration in their products. The technology is essentially the same, one manufacturer calls Turbo Boost, the other Turbo Core, but this does not change its essence: the processor frequency can dynamically change, moreover, automatically, without user intervention. The need to use such a technology is caused by the fact that the multicore of modern processors has already become, in fact, the norm, but the multithreading of modern applications, unfortunately, is not yet available. The operating system, seeing that one of the processor cores is loaded much stronger than the others, independently increases the frequency of this core, while trying to leave the processor within its “native” heat packet (that is, the system tries to make sure against overheating of the equipment). Moreover, depending on the processor model and on specific conditions, such a frequency increase can range from 100 to 600-700 MHz, and this, you see, is a significant increase in performance. This technology is supported by most of the latest processors from both manufacturers. At Intel, in particular, all CPUs of the Core i5 and Core i7 lineup, at AMD - all processors on the AM3 + socket, processors on the FM1 socket (except for processors with a disabled graphics core), as well as some “stones” for the AM3 platform (six-core Tuban and Quad Zosma). Moreover, for Intel processors based on the Socket 1155 socket, this auto-overclocking is even more relevant, given that due to some architectural features, a full-fledged overclocking by increasing the processor bus frequency is almost impossible. However, this topic is already a completely different article ...