1) is the best/newest/fastest current desktop processor the intel i7 or intel i7 extreme or something completely different?

2) what is the best/newest laptop cpu ?

3) for server computers and supercomputers what is the best cpu for them is it the same as the desktop ones just more of them in the machine ? Or is their a whole different chip design for these type's of computers.

 

Almost any answer will be dated; as in a month or so, a new round of processors will be out. This happens every couple of months.

It will cost you extra money to be on the "bleeding edge" of computing power, as things in that realm change very quickly.

I don't even bother to try to get the latest & greatest anymore - it's far too expensive, and the equipment gets outdated too rapidly. Better off getting a mid-range computer that'll do everything you need for it to do.

The biggest bottleneck is the speed of your hard drive. SSD's (solid state drives) were horrifically expensive, but are coming down in price. Couple at least 4 gigs of RAM with an SSD, and you will think that your computer has hit Warp 8.

 

I'm still using my 2.5Gig Athlon with a 500Gig HD, 1 Gig of RAM and XP. I'm happy with it. I've been using it for over 10 years, and have maxed out my motherboard quite a while ago in slow increments. The 2.5Gig is a lie, of course, the current trend is to list the speed "it runs as fast as", I think the real speed of my CPU is around 1.3Gig. I believe this is extremely dishonest, but what to do? Read the fine print is a good start.

Parallel processors on a CPU is great for multitasking, but for singular jobs such as math crunching it isn't that big an advance. Since most people do have several things going at once it does help IMO.

 

I agree with SgtWookie, computer hardware is outdated on a monthly basis.

Here are the specs to my computer (I bought it in December 2010), at that time it was almost top of the line:

• CPU: i7 950, I had it overclocked to 4GHz for a while, but I removed the overclock when summer came
• CPU Cooler: Corsair H70
• RAM: 12GB 1600MHz
• Motherboard: Asus P6X58D-E
• Video: ATI Radeon 6850 1GB DDR5
• Power supply: Corsair 850Watt
• Hard Drive: The operating system (Win 7 PRO) runs on a RevoDrive 240GB, 540MB/s read, 480MB/s write

The RevoDrive alone cost me $530, the total computer price was about $2000

 

I'll bet you like that RevoDrive, dontcha Michael?

 

I'll bet you like that RevoDrive, dontcha Michael?

Yep ! it's really fast. I don't have to wait for any application to load, even the most demanding applications load in 2-3 seconds... (for example Photoshop)

I can run multiple virtual PCs. For example, I can run several virtual Windows XPs, or 2 windows servers with 4 GB RAM allocated for each...