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how can this be faster than this when it should clearly be the other way around

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for years i've been reading comments from people who believe that the faster

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the gigahertz the faster the CPU and why shouldn't they believe that gigahertz

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also referred to as clock speed or frequency is quite literally a measure

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of how fast the transistors in a processor switch so all else being equal

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more gigahertz should be more better but all else is not equal and in today's

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video we're going to dive into what those unequal things are and just how

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unequal they can be we're also going to dive into today's sponsor arazi thanks

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to make sure that our test is as fair as possible both of our cpus used identical

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test benches ASUS tough b550 plus motherboards nocto nhd14 coolers 16 gigs

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of dual channel 3600 megahertz c14 memory a crucial p5 NVMe SSD and an rtx

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3060 xc from evga we're going to have all these parts in our affiliate links

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down below well most of them gpus can kind of be hard to find

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now for the cpus to keep politics out of the conversation we're going to be using

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only AMD branded processors but these principles can be applied to any other

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situation where cpus are being compared naturally we started with a full run of

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our benchmark suite at out of the box speeds so we can see how the higher

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gigahertz 3600 xt fared against the

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5600x remember that both of these cpus have

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exactly the same number of cores and threads

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somewhat intuitively the newer processor does outperform the older one and

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sometimes by a considerable margin but why well many modern processors are

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capable of dynamically boosting their clock speed under favorable conditions

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say for example when they have a really good cooler installed maybe our 5600x is

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just a mad CPU frequency boosting machine let's try raining it in and

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seeing what happens then at our locked clock speed of 3.4 gigahertz the 5600 xt

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still wins in every single test so

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clearly then gigahertz is not the only determining factor for CPU performance

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but these numbers aren't enough to tell the whole story let's look at gaming if

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i only measured average FPS in shadow of the tomb raider and grand theft auto 5 i

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might think that a 5600x is only about 5 percent faster than a 3600 xt in the

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real world but take something more CPU bound like cs go and these two cpus with

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the same core counts running at the same frequencies are nowhere near each other

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but then dropping the clock frequency even

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further to 2.4 gigahertz it's clear that

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the lower the clock goes the slower our

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cpus get so what is it does gigahertz

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matter or not there are a couple of takeaways here starting with that yes

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gigahertz absolutely matters which raises the question then why don't CPU

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manufacturers just run their chips at higher clock speeds i mean bring on the

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10 gigahertz cpus am i right well

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that was the plan actually but higher clock speeds come at the cost

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of more power consumption which tends to result in hotter running chips

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thankfully though there are a lot of other levers that CPU designers can pull

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to improve performance which leads us to our second takeaway cpus or any kind of

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processor for that matter gpus phone socs anything

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should never be compared using gigahertz

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alone it is clearly an important spec and

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manufacturers do need to disclose it because it enables us to compare

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products within their own families but if you want to talk about an m1 mac

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versus an Intel mac or an AMD GPU versus

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an NVIDIA one don't even bring it up you

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would only be revealing your ignorance on the subject let's talk then about

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some of the ways a CPU can differ aside from gigahertz an obvious one is that

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they can be designed to process more threads or tasks in parallel Intel was

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the first to process two concurrent threads on a consumer chip with hyper

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threading or smt while AMD was the first to build a truly multi-core CPU with

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their x2 series dual cores that were capable of doing nearly double the work

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under ideal conditions the only drawback to additional cores is that they

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increase die size meaning cost and power consumption and they can't be used to

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accelerate single threaded workloads so in many consumer applications like games

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they are only helpful up to a point currently AMD and Intel's mainstream

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lineups top out at 16 and 8 cores respectively so we can't keep pushing

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core counts forever and expect consumer applications to scale and clock speeds

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have been locked in the same range for over 15 years then what have they

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changed to really push forward single core performance the simple answer is

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ipc or instructions per clock if we

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think of a CPU like a mine and each core

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like a miner running back and forth doing work the clock speed is how many

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times our miner can run back and forth per second while the ipc is how much

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they can carry on each load look at the apple m1 for example joe average gamer

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might laugh at its meager 3.2 gigahertz

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clock speed but when it comes to the real world it performs pretty damn well

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like this sexy retro GPU t-shirt from lttstore.com what that tells us about it

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is that it has better ipc than a CPU

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that runs at a higher frequency but performs the same the problem though is

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ipc sounds a lot simpler than it is you can't just

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add more instructions to each clock cycle let's go back to our mine analogy

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the problem is that our mind contains every single possible type of mineral or

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rock and let's say those represent different apps or programs and each of

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them requires specialized equipment so

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let's say you level up your miner by adding more points to their shovel and

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suddenly there's a boost to your coal gathering but sifting for gold well

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shovel doesn't help you with that so performance is entirely unaffected

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that's how you can see a new generation of CPU come out that absolutely crushes

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cinebench but gets the same FPS in games

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so ipc is problematic along with clock

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speeds and core counts it's one of the most important ways to predict a

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processor's performance and yet unlike those other attributes

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nobody can agree on a fair and objective way to measure it the way that we

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enthusiasts use the term saying things like this new CPU has 20 higher ipc than

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the old one can be misleading a manufacturer could easily spend all

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their time tuning performance for a single commonly benchmarked program like

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geekbench or cinebench when that wouldn't be representative of the real

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world experience of using it though AMD and Intel also throw the term around in

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this way when it suits them so i blame them now there are major CPU

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design factors that can the real world performance of a high ipc CPU

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that's tuned for a particular benchmark let's talk about waste going back to our

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mine analogy adding cash to a CPU is kind of like making easy piles of our

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minerals or data that can be shoveled and carted out of the mine more quickly

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the bigger the pile the more likely it is that you can just fill up your

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wheelbarrow and off you go on the other hand if there's

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nothing in the pile the miner has to go deeper into the mine or to the system

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memory to retrieve it that's going to take longer then there's the branch

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predictor it is kind of like mine supervisors who attempt to proactively

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communicate which minerals are going to be needed in the near future rather than

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just having the miners wait around for an order CPU designers can dramatically

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improved performance with accurate branch prediction but the logic for it

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takes up space on the CPU that could also just be used to add more miners so

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it ends up being a delicate balancing act speaking of the physical layout of

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the course imagine if our miner parked their wheelbarrow right next to the

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mineral heap instead of five steps away and carried it like that CPU designers

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are always looking for ways to make each load more efficient and sometimes the

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actual physical proximity of CPU elements can be a big difference maker

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so an obvious solution to this problem then is to stop using gigahertz stop

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using ipc and rather use a broad industry standard set of real-world

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tests the problem with that is if we're looking at real-world benchmarks we end

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up with real-world messiness including politics between competing brands who

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would each naturally prefer tests that favor their own products this is why to

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this day we still need reviewers lots of them so that you can see a wide variety

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of different methodologies and test suites and how the product that you're

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considering stacks up and so that you can learn about sponsors like nordpass

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Linus and use code Linus as always thanks for listening folks i

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hope it helps you make the right choice next time you're looking to upgrade if you enjoyed this video hey give a thumbs

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up and make sure to check out is 4 core still enough you might be surprised by

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the results they are only helpful