I am wondering what number do i look at to see if one chips is more effective than an other the E4400 or E6700 for example or the GHZ of teh chip. This realtes to playing games?
You can't just take Ghz at face value, it depends on the chip, its cache, its architecture, and a lot of other things. The E6700 is more powerful than the E4400 because it has a higher clock speed (2.66Ghz vs. 2.00Ghz) on the same architecture. The only other difference is cache, which again is in favour of the E6700. However, different architectures represent speed boosts. My 2.5Ghz E5200 can match the 2.66Ghz E6700 even though it has less cache, because it has a newer architecture.
Thank you is there a way for me to se what CPU has the same architecture so I am actually comparing apples to apples?
It's not totally straightforward, but the simplest check is the model name. For instance: An Athlon X2 3800+ (Socket 939) will be the same architecture as an X2 4800+ (also socket 939) Even the 6000+ (Socket AM2), whilst a slightly different architecture, performs about the same. The 7750BE however, note the different name system, is totally different, and performs a lot better, per mhz. Again, the Athlon II X2 555, totally different name again, and performs better still, per mhz. Same goes for the Core 2 Duos really, but the confusion there is that the E6 series is slower per mhz, than the E5 series which is newer, but cheaper. The best indicator you have here is the process size, 65nm (old) for the E6, 45nm (new) for the E5/7/8 series.
