What is a Gigahertz?

• How often have you watched a TV commercial advancing the benefits of
  their computer in terms of the word Gigahertz and not fully understood
  the meaning of it? In this brief article we will attempt to provide you
  with a short introduction to that word.


• As a shopper who may
  be on the look out for a new and more advanced personal computer, you
  should be aware of the term gigahertz as it applies to your potential
  machine. While reviewing the specification listings relating to your
  possible new computer you will soon notice that the word Gigahertz
  appears prominently on the spec sheet. This is a very important aspect
  relating to any computer.


• Let’s first determine what a
  gigahertz actually is before we venture into its meaning with personal
  computers. Technically, one gigahertz is the equivalent of 1,000
  megahertz or MHz. Going even lower on the measurement chart we could
  say that it is equal to 1,000,000,000 Hz. In either case the higher the
  rated number of gigahertz that is specified for your potential computer
  the better the machine will perform in terms of computing speed. This
  higher figure refers to the processing speed that is associated with
  the computer – the higher the gigahertz the faster the machine and the
  faster the machine the better its performance will be.


• There
  was a period of time in the past when gigahertz was not used as the
  measurement associated with personal computer speeds. At that time the
  speed of the PC’s were measured in terms of megahertz which is really
  very slow by today’s standards. During the late 1990’s the speeds of
  the microprocessors were drastically improved moving way past the 1,000
  MHz level. Since it was necessary to establish a higher level for the
  speed measurement the gigahertz was selected for this task. Today this
  is the standard by which all computer processing speeds are calculated.


• The
  choice of selecting the GHz was also for convenience purposes as well.
  It is much simpler and easier to merely state that a machine has a 3.0
  gigahertz speed as opposed to saying the speed was 3,000 megahertz.Although
  most people may perhaps believe that the term gigahertz is merely used
  as a means of measuring the processor speed of personal computers it is
  in reality used as a form of measurement concerning speeds relating to
  other parts of the computer as well. As an example, this particular
  measurement can readily be used to relate the performance of the
  systems RAM and also for the backside cache.  Just keep in mind that
  the higher the gigahertz of these various components is then the better
  performance that your computer will have. This boils down to the bottom
  line of better productivity for the end users