AMD first to reach 5GHz with FX-9590 processor

[fordy]

yum123 said:

Soleron said:

yum123 said:
so If clock speed is becoming more irrelevant. what are the best measurements to look for when choosing a cpu. number of cores and?

No easy number any more. Look up benchmarks for the kind of application you're interested in.

So its essentially firmware and certain software features for each cpu now 

I think what he's trying to say is that some CPUs excel at some things compared to others. There's no clear-cut defined number to show which CPU is superior to all others, given all the factors such as cycles per instruction, instruction pipelines, complexity of branch predictors, etc. 

So the best way to measure CPU capability is to test it using tests designed for what you'd expect to use it for (video benchmarks usually stress test streaming, gaming benchmarks measuring FP computing etc.)