Is core count or clock speed more important to the CPU?

The central processing unit (CPU) on a computer is by far one of the strongest determinants of its performance. If the CPU is not fast enough, the remaining hardware will overload it with many tasks. In the mid-90s, when the desktop market was growing rapidly, CPUs had only one core.

Today's modern CPUs are an architectural wonder, with a number of different channels for distributing and temporarily storing tasks. They are smarter, quicker and more dynamic. But the new CPUs also pose new questions to the public. In particular, there is a war that will probably never end. It is a battle between the number of cores the CPU has and its clock speed.

Why is core important?

Is core count or clock speed more important to the CPU? Picture 1

If you had a computer in the '90s or even the early 2000s, you may remember that when a program freezes, it's likely that the whole system freezes too. This is mainly because the CPU has only a single core, which handles all the computations for the system. You can see this is definitely a problem, right?

If there is only one core in the CPU and you tell that core to do something that takes a long time, nothing else will be done while the CPU is doing it. So when dual-core CPUs appeared, a computer's multitasking capabilities have been greatly improved. Now, there are 64 cores in the most powerful AMD Threadripper and workstation CPUs and Epyc.

Why is clock speed important?

The CPU clock speed, as the name implies, greatly affects the number of tasks each core can perform in a given amount of time. Its speed and bit width tell you how much data can pass through each second. If a CPU has a bit width of 32 bits and a speed of 3.93GHz, that means it can process almost 4 billion units of 32 bits of data per second.

Is core count or clock speed more important to the CPU? Picture 2

The fastest factory clock speeds on CPUs fluctuate in the 5GHz range, and most operating systems today are 64-bit, so those are big numbers. This means the CPU can run truly single-threaded applications very quickly. Game is a major point that makes a higher clock speed often more important than the number of cores, as some games don't use as many cores. That is changing but still remains today.

So core count or clock speed more important to the CPU?

As with most computer hardware options, it all depends on use case and budget. For example, there are laptops that cost up to $ 10,000. However, if you need as much power as you can in a compact laptop (assuming you're an engineer running simulations of offshore oil rig performance), then that's a great choice. There are desktops that can do more than that, but they are much harder to move.

Where to use a larger number of cores depends on your workload. If you are running different virtual machines or rendering movies, you will totally benefit from an extremely powerful multi-core CPU. Those workloads are multithreaded, and the Threadripper CPU will completely speed those up.

Many scientists and researchers who are creating models to protect the world will also benefit from the large number of cores. This is because these often involve a lot of small chores, and when you can run your simulation for 2 days versus a week and a half, you'll definitely notice a difference.

Large clock speed use cases are much more common. Gamers, developers, and content creators completely benefit from faster clock speeds. This usually means short-term, less multithreaded tasks that most users run will complete faster, making the CPU perform better.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 15 December 2020