Processor Speed

It could be anything!! Depends on what speed it runs at.

Seriously, all 'common' desktop processors are x86. Intel's first 'pc' processor was the 8086, then the 80186, 286, 386 etc, etc. Hence the x (any number) followed by the 86.

The family, model and stepping refer to internal processor design (Pentium, Pentium II, AMD-5x86, K6, Cyrix 6x86, etc.), core architecture and revision. You cannot tell the speed by these figures. Speed is a combination of front side bus (clock) speed...66, 100, 133, etc times the multiplier (4x, 4.5x, 5x....10x) and there is no relationship between the clock/multiplier and the Family, Model and Stepping, other than a range of processors within a family or model will have a range of speeds.

Heres the rub....all processors within a Family, Stepping and Model group are all designed to run at the SAME SPEED. But, when processors are tested on the die, before they are packaged, they may fail to run at the maximum design speed, so they are tested at a slower speed. If they fail at this speed, they are slowed down another notch until they run perfectly. When packaged, they are then marked up at their guaranteed speed.

This of course is why many people overclock processors, because under certain conditions, a processor will run at the design speed and not just the speed at which it passed it's burn in test. If a Celeron, for example, is designed for 1.4GHz (say), perhaps only 60% of a production run can be guaranteed to work at this speed, within normal thermal or electrical design parameters. The other 40% are tested at slower speeds. Those that pass may be marked as Celeron 1.3GHz and those that fail again get marked down another notch.

The point? A whole range of CPU's from , say, 1.1 to 1.4GHz can have identical Family, Model and Stepping numbers.....but be marked up as and run at different speeds....therefore....you can tell by looking up on AMD or Intels web-site, the 'range' of speeds that are available within that family, model and step, what 'core' is used (Palomino, Thunderbird, Morgan,Thoroughbred, etc. for AMD; Tualatin, Katmai, etc. for Intel; Ezra, Samuel 1 or Samuel 2 for Cyrix/Via) but NOT the actual CPU speed. That is given on the bios splash screen, or can be worked out by FSB x Multiplier.

What you are seeing is how Windows and the BIOS communicate the CPU information.

Assuming that you have an Intel CPU, you can download a utility from Intel that will tell you the actual CPU speed.

There are a number of utilities that you can download to report the actual CPU speed and a host of other system information.

Chas