Not up to date on processors

[VampD]

I used to do a lot of research on the core 2 duos and even built an old e6600 and e6700s computer for someone. Since then I know they came out with the e6750 which were just supposed to be slightly better versions of their previous counterparts. However Ive been away for a while and now see theres all kinds of processors like the e8800 and e7200 models ( although the e7200 model is below the clock speed of a e6700 ). Can anyone give me a brief run down on these new models and how they compare? Also why does the smaller the nm number = the better and why?

 

[Snake91839]

You haven't missed much... The nm reduction is just a smaller architecture... The smaller it is, the cooler it runs, and the less power it takes... which all in turn cause a faster machine. The 8800 if I'm not mistaken is known for it's large caches. Don't let the Clock speeds distract you... there are a lot more to them than just that.

If you're a big OCer... than smaller nm is always better. Also, smaller nm usually means it's cheaper to mass produce too. So it's better and cheaper, that's exactly what you want!

 

[alexsabree]

You haven't missed much... The nm reduction is just a smaller architecture... The smaller it is, the cooler it runs, and the less power it takes... which all in turn cause a faster machine. The 8800 if I'm not mistaken is known for it's large caches. Don't let the Clock speeds distract you... there are a lot more to them than just that.

If you're a big OCer... than smaller nm is always better. Also, smaller nm usually means it's cheaper to mass produce too. So it's better and cheaper, that's exactly what you want!

Nicely put

Yeah nm doesn't increase performance at all, but enables them to be clocked higher and usually lead to better over-clocks. Yeah pretty much any modern CPU will do fine. Seems GPUs are falling behind CPU performance these days.