[dekhn]

Clock rates of CPUs are not a measure of "speed". Time to solution is the measure of speed. There have historically been computers with lower clock rates with higher rates of results production (larger cache, more work done per cycle).

[belter]

That was why I mentioned cache and of course we could talk MIPS.

[dekhn]

But those are only proxy variables to explain "performance", or "throughput", or "latency". No doubt, if I wanted a fast single machine, the two configs you showed would both be nice- the former because it's an off-the-shelf part that just "runs stuff faster" than most slower processors, and the latter because it represents the limit of what a person with some infrastructure can do (although, TBH, I'd double check every result the system generated).

Ultimately, however, no system is measured by its clock rate- or by its cache size- or by its MIPS. Because no real workload is truly determined by a simple linear function of those variables.

[belter]

Agree. So because we have many parameters, and as master of my universe, I selected the clock cycle as my measure of fast :-)

Time to completion will depend on task.