Is having a higher CPU performance than it says possible?

Question

Quote "http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/" on running Spore:

CPU Speed:

Minimum: 2 GHz

You Have: 1.86 GHz Performance Rated at 2.79 GHz

Is that possible or just a mistake?

Answer 1

The Pentium M is a much more efficient processor than the Pentium 4 and was able to do more work at any given clock speed (and had very good performance per Watt).

Try downloading the demo and see how well that runs, if your laptops graphics subsystem is up to the task you'll probably be able to run it pretty well.

Answer 2

Yes, it is possible, in one of two ways:

1. AMD processors are given a "performance rating." This rating is meant to compare to some processor in Intel's line-up. The idea is that AMD (supposedly) has better performance at a lower clock rate (the speed in Ghz).

2. The requirements for Spore are a 2 Ghz Pentium 4. Dual-core processors are faster than most single-core chips. Though that doesn't appear to be what that information is displaying, since a 1.86 Ghz Core 2 Duo would be about equal to a 4.5 Ghz Pentium 4 in performance.