Originally posted by HumanJHawkins
I am a Mac fan, but I have to correct part of that before I answer... The Mac is behind in both MHz and speed right now. It is just not as far behind as the numbers make it look.
Anyway, MHz just indicates how many times per second the processor does some work. It says nothing about how much work it does each time.
It is kind of like knowing how many times the delivery truck comes without knowing how much stuff it delivers. One company is saying "We can make 300 trips a year." Another is saying "We can make 200 trips per year, but we carry twice as much per trip."
Obviously, the slower delivery company in this case is delivering more stuff. That is like Apple compared to Intel. But, Intel started going so much faster, that even though it does much less work per time, it still is getting more done computationally these days. AMD is another story... They are about as efficient as Motorolla, and also run at 1.6 GHz, making them both way faster and way more productive on a purely computationally level.
This says nothing about the efficiency of the OS, which more than makes up for the difference for most Mac fans.
If your question was about, how did Apple's chips (Motorolla) get so far behind in MHz, it is because making chips is an extremely difficult thing to do. Why did the Chicago Bulls dominate basketball for so long? Because they worked hard, had talent, and got lucky.
Motorolla may be working hard and may have talent, but perhaps they just havent gotten some of the breaks they need. It will see-saw the other way eventually, or maybe IBM will come up with something that moves the B3, G4, G5 line forward.
There is also some decision making going on about stratagy for advancing the chips... Intel for example sacrificed a lot of efficiency to come up with the P4 design that can run at such high MHz. They made choices that made a P4 chip much less efficient than the PIII. A 1.5 GHz P4 chip is about as fast as a 1.0 GHz PIII chip.
But, the PIII chip can't be made to run at more than about 1.2 GHz without a lot of expense and effort. The P4 can easily run at 2.2 GHz these days. So by being less efficient but having a higher potential MHz, the P4 is actually made faster than the PIII.
Motorolla seems to have taken the approach of increasing efficiency and speed. Most engineers will tell you that this is the better way to go from a scientific standpoint. But if consumers continue to focus only on MHz, this will be a markeing nightmare.
