What's the fastest processor on the market right now?
How soon until the next faster processor on the market comes out?


I've been out of the computer hardware game for about 5 years.

6/13/2011 11:32:52 PM

Intel 2600K is the fastest thing out. Intel's next gen, Ivy Bridge, is due by the end of the year IIRC.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2

6/14/2011 12:55:18 AM

nowadays it depends on the program; for single-threaded programs, clock speed matters most, while multi-threaded programs can take advantage of multiple cores

the reason this matters is that issues of thermal breakdown have kept the advance of raw clock speeds stuck somewhere around 4GHz, so to make CPUs that "feel faster" in real-world situations, designers have been adding ever more cores

there may also be a difference between 64-bit and 32-bit architectures, but at least for laptops and larger computers, 32-bit has been almost completely phased out, and the operating systems and programs of the future will take advantage of 64-bit instruction sets

finally, depending on the type of computer you're looking for, you may need to account for differences among architecture families, like ARM vs. Intel 64 (and not just the fact that so far all ARM CPUs are 32-bit), but there isn't so much competition in each market segment anymore, like a decade ago when IA-32 vs. PPC was prominent and the "Megahertz Myth" had to be debunked so consumers wouldn't think a 600MHz G3 was much slower than a PC with a 1GHz Pentium III

6/14/2011 1:02:38 AM

I hear Apple is da fastest with something like a gazillion hertz with the dingydodad and the whatchamacallit.

[Edited on June 14, 2011 at 1:42 AM. Reason : ]

6/14/2011 1:42:14 AM

Personally imago wait until AMD stops making processors for my laptop mobo socket and then get the fastest one that fits, just as I did with my old laptop and desktop.

6/14/2011 2:10:41 AM

The fastest processors will be i7's that are hex core and carry the xxxxK moniker.

The K series is freaking awesome. The i5-2500K outpaces about 80% of the i7's

[Edited on June 14, 2011 at 10:09 AM. Reason : for a desktop anyway. If we're talking server hardware that's a whole different ballgame]

6/14/2011 10:09:18 AM