How important is PC processor speed, really?

(Credit: Intel )

In the old days, choosing a computer was easy: you bought the one with the fastest processor you could afford. And you knew which processor was fastest (more or less) by its numerical clock-speed rating.

These days it's a lot trickier. Only hard-core techies (and those with the patience to search in Google) know the difference between, say, an AMD A4-3305M and an Intel Core i3-2350M.

And even then, does it really matter? There's a strong argument to be made that processor performance, even in low-cost, entry-level PCs, has reached a level that's "good enough" for most users -- folks who use their machines mostly for word processing, e-mail, and Web stuff.

Of course, more and more users are turning to tablets for those activities, but that's another topic entirely.

Obviously some people need all the processing power they can get -- though usually that's for graphics-intensive tasks like games, video editing, and Photoshop. And that's where you need a desktop with a decent video card or a laptop with decent discrete graphics. Dual-core versus quad-core versus Core-this-or-that is less of a factor.

There's another factor that can contribute to overall PC performance, one that can actually trump the hardware you have. See, I own a fairly state-of-the-art Core i7 machine with 8GB of RAM, a 750GB hard drive, discrete graphics, and the like. It's barely two years old. And you know w... [Read more]