Instruction sets ?

[Sandycheeks]

I have never come across anything that my old i3 530 can't do.
Newer processors have new instruction sets but what exactly does this mean to joe public ?

 

[JonSmith]

More performance in applications compiled to take advantage of them.

It helps a lot with Linux performance because you can compile a whole distro and the applications to take advantage, rather than waiting for Microsoft to update the OS.

A lot of performance dependent applications are regularly updated to take advantage. However games are very rarely affected by this, there are some examples such as Crisis 3 which do see improvements. I believe BF4 is one of them also.

 

[Orangey]

Video encoding (h.265) and crypto are some examples.

Here is another:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Vector_Extensions

Improved performance in Linux software RAID is something I consider desirable, so for that alone I think I would consider it valuable but it has wide-ranging benefits.

http://www.quora.com/AVX-CPU-instru...t-most-from-the-AVX-instruction-set-extension

 

[Sandycheeks]

so doesn't mean a lot then for average joe.
I ask as I was looking at older processors vs newer ones and often read that the older ones are missing the newer instruction sets and just wondered if it makes any real world difference to your average guy or gal.