What to look for in a CPU?

[Katsumoto]

Title really.

I'm not all that knowledgable when it comes to computer hardware and when it comes to CPU's I find it annoying to know exactly what i'm looking for. I can read reviews and such sure but i'd like to really know what's what.

Currently I pretty much just see:

1) Clock speed
2) Core count

And on that front, i'd think 'Omg the AMD Bulldozer must trounce most other CPU's/all others on the market'. However that apparently isn't the case. What does BD do wrong? What am I missing and how do other specs of a CPU affect it's performance (cache etc).

 

[Katsumoto]

The third one: Architecture. You need to see if it's design actually gives good performance per clock (IPC). Usually best way of knowing this is checking reviews.

Also depends on what you do as well, not every software can take advantage of so many cores. Most programs usually only use 2 cores efficiently, and only recently games are using quad cores, although not very efficiently yet.

Gaming, spreadsheets and business planning alongside web browsing for me. Thanks for letting me know, wasn't really aware that clock speeds can vary in value... thought a 3ghz processor was a 3ghz processor lol.