How much speed is really necessary?

In 1965, integrated circuit pioneer Gordon Moore hypothesized about the future of the microchip. The microchip was, at this stage, in its infancy incorporating just 64 transistors, but Moore claimed that every year the number of transistors would double. This bold statement, which proved to be more or less correct, became known as Moore`s Law. Today Moore`s Law is still proving to be roughly on the money, though Moore himself revised it slightly to doubling every 18 to 24 months.

"According to Moore`s Law in just four years time we will be sitting with 22Ghz monsters on our desks. Although this is probable, I can`t see the need for chips this fast," states Kevin Sanderson, brand manager for Vision PCs a member of SDD`s Local Brands Division. "A PC equipped with an 800Mhz P3 chip is more than capable of handling anything a typical corporate user can throw at it. Users will usually not multitask between more than a spreadsheet, word processor, browser and e-mail application. Blazing speed is typically reserved for killer apps like graphics and complex games - and even the most sophisticated of these will run exceptionally well on a properly configured 800Mhz machine with a good graphics accelerator and sufficient RAM," he goes on to explain.

Although processors are currently available at speeds well in excess of the Gigahertz milestone - Intel`s Pentium 4 is on offer at up to 1,5 Ghz - machines with these specifications are generally chosen by high end users who purchase the machines more to impress than out of a real requirement for these blistering speeds. "If you are looking for a PC for home or corporate use it makes excellent economic sense to choose something in the region of 733 to 800Mhz and spend the considerable saving you will make on the CPU on a high end graphics card and perhaps a little extra RAM. Such a machine will handle, at a swift pace, any application with ease. Economically consumers following Moore`s Law believe that a PC you buy today should cost half as much in 18 months time, so buying the bees knees today is not necessarily the right decision," states Sanderson.

Justifying a requirement for increased speed to some extent is the infinitely more complex software available today. However, even the most poorly coded bloatware can be dealt with efficiently by a "slow" 800Mhz processor, reckons Sanderson.

While exceedingly powerful chips will exist in the future, it is not fully understood today how they will be used or needed in the home or business PC. Highly specialised applications may require scorching speeds, but that is not practical for today`s user. "Chip speeds are not the only thing affecting the speed of your computer. Other significant factors relating to performance include your video card; amount of RAM; the type of RAM; hard disk seek times; hard drive access method and of course the configuration. So we should stop worshipping at the altar of Hertz," concludes Sanderson.