HELP:how to calculate proper cpu power?

[Joe Forster/STA]

Yeah, the effective performance (virtual frequency) and the nominal frequency increase (or decrease) in parallel. (On a given processor family, that is. With a next-generation CPU, a lower nominal frequency can have a higher effective performance: better optimization, more pipelines, more cores, more parallelization etc.)

As for "64" in the CPU name, it means a 64-bit CPU (rather than the previous generation of 32-bit CPU's); "FX" is some subtype (I'm not up-to-date with current CPU namings; see AMD's homepage for more infos). If you buy such a CPU, make sure to buy a motherboard that explicitly supports it (the motherboard manual and the product page at the manufacturer's site has such a list).

[kosmiq]

the name FX is amd's line of A64 cpu's made for gaming. Not that there is some real difference in terms of performance its only that they have higher clocks and more cache out of the box.

Moreover when you are upgrading be sure to check for more then the + rating. As example: 4000+ is single core clocked to 2.4GHz while the 4400+ is a dual-core cpu with 2 cores clocked to 2.2GHz (correct me if I am wront, not remembering the exact numbers here) and the 4600+ has both cores at the same speed as the 4400+ BUT has larger L2 cache.