How do you tell the speed of a processor? I thought speeds used to be listed with all the other features in an advertisement, but there must be some kind of code in the names/numbers of the processors these days. Also, why are AMD's considered better than Celeron?

It used to be that clock speed was the major determining factor in PC speed comparisons. But that has changed so that its just one factor. So a 1.8Ghz CPU might outperform a 2.4 Ghz CPU due to other factors like cache, bus speed and more. For this reason, both AMD and Intel have eliminated advertising the clock speed and just go for model #s. While this make it difficult to compare CPUs between AMD and Intel, it makes it easier to tell within a product line. I just bought a PC with an AMD Athlon X2 4600+. I know that will perform better than the 3800+ but not as well as the 5000+.

If you want to compare different CPUs I would suggest tomshardware.com for benchmark tests.

If you want to get the clockspeed of your CPU, for XP, you can right click on My Computer, select Properties and the clock speed will be listed on the General tab.

AMD is a manufacturer of CPUs, Celeron is a model line of Intel CPUs. Celeron's are Intel's budget chip. AMD's equivalent is the Sempron line. However, in most benchmark testing AMD outperforms the equivalent Intel model. This is especially true of the AMD X2 line vs Intel's Core Duo line.The main exception to that is the new Intel Core 2 Duo line. Intel has finally caught up with AMD with this processor family.

P.S. When posting a question, its not a good idea to piggyback on someone else's thread unless your question is directly related. That's why I've moved this to its own thread in the Hardware area.

Well, look at the sky-high prices of core 2 duo compared to the AMD X2 series.. hehe! :D