– Why does clock speed matter on a CPU, and why do some top-tier CPU’s have lower clock speeds than some from nearly 10 generations ago?

Question

I have a good understanding of what clock speed is, but why does it matter?

For the second question, I was wondering since for example, the new i9-14900K has a base clock speed of 3.2 GHz, whereas my previous desktop CPU, the i7-4790K, had a base clock speed of 4.0 GHz. Why hasn’t this number steadily gone up thought the years?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Increasingly, it is the number of cores that matter, which is essentially the number of chips at that clock speed stacked together. Other parts of the computer limit speed, so a super fast chip may not have any impact on overall performance. Bus speeds, graphics card speed, whether you’re using a solid state drive or one that spins, etc.