Processors have been stuck in the 2-5 GHz range for basically a decade, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get any faster. My question is, how does their speed keep getting faster, if the clock speed isn’t getting faster?
Example: The Ryzen 7 5800X (based off leaked benchmarks) is somewhere around 20% faster than the Ryzen 9 3900X for single-core benchmarks. How is a jump of this size possible without increasing clock speed? I’m sure they did increase clocks a little bit for the upcoming generation, but not by 20%.
In: Technology
In ELI5 terms, newer processors do more things in parallel. More cores, more cache, better algorithms etc etc means new processors do more stuff per clock cycle than older ones.
Other factors increase speed, like number of cores, amount of stuff you can fit on the wafer(L1, L2 cache, etc) arrangement of registers, coprocessors and all that.
“Faster” isn’t as accurate as “does more stuff in the same amount of space with a similar power draw”
Clock speed isn’t as much of an indicator of performance as it used to be. Think of a 3 cylinder engine that Revs at 50,000 rpm Vs a V12 diesel that Revs at 2000rpm but can pull a truck.
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