[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.