Could anyone offer any tips for evaluating processors in this post-megahertz age? My 2012 Macbook Air (base 11" model) has a 1.7 GHz Core i5 processor, yet I understand the 1.4 GHz (Haswell) Core i5 in the latest machines performs significantly better.
Is the generation of the processor always the dominant factor nowadays? Is there a convenient way to estimate performance without poring over benchmarks? What are people's favourite sites for finding out about these things?
> Is the generation of the processor always the dominant factor nowadays?
No.
> Is there a convenient way to estimate performance without poring over benchmarks?
Unless you are willing to quite a lot of time learning, not really. And unless you've been willing to do that, you haven't been able to conveniently estimate performance for about 14 years now.
> What are people's favourite sites for finding out about these things?
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/ is pretty good, as they standardize all results into a convenient database with easy head-to-head comparisons.
Tomshardware has the good benchmarks for "hacker" usage.
In my opinion Phoronix does the best job about benchmarking, but usually you must wait a little.
Is the generation of the processor always the dominant factor nowadays? Is there a convenient way to estimate performance without poring over benchmarks? What are people's favourite sites for finding out about these things?