Intel has spent years and billions of dollars convincing consumers that megahertz matters, and today PC buyers are trained to look for systems with higher speed processors--even if the raw clock speed of the chip isn't the primary driver of performance.

FORBES: Chief Executive Paul Otellini

The fastest of the bunch is an Athlon XP chip with a clock speed of 1.53 GHz.

FORBES: Silicon Confusion

For years, Intel and AMD dueled back and forth for control of the megahertz crown, implying that a higher clock speed equaled a better chip.

FORBES: Silicon Confusion

During early 2000, AMD was the first of the two to launch a chip with a clock speed of 1, 000 megahertz, or 1 gigahertz, a sort of industry milestone.

FORBES: Silicon Confusion

You can also plug them into the HitClips Alarm Clock, which doubles as a chip player and storage device.

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The demonstration appeared to be designed to show just how much clock speed Intel may be able to squeeze out of its new chip design.

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To call it a big jump would be an understatement: compared to the 8800M, the flagship 8970M chip doubles the stream processors to 1, 280, hikes the clock speed from 725MHz to 850MHz and bumps the memory speed slightly to 1.2GHz.

ENGADGET

What really matters is how much work a chip can accomplish, a figure measured by the number of instructions executed per clock cycle.

FORBES: Silicon Confusion