Processors for a long time where measured in speed. This was very acceptable up until computers got up into the hundreds of Triple Digit Mhz. The reason was that no longer was a computer automatically faster at processing if it had a higher hertz rating.

The reason why the higher hertz rating is because processing was already instant. That is as soon as you send a command, it was executed by the processor as soon as it got there.

I have an example to show how this works

Single-Double digit Mhz or less processors(educated guess)

Image a double digit megahertz processor as a group of say 3 people. When you wanted to tell someone something, you would send a person to the apartment and that person would deliver the message. To deliver that message takes time, and during that time you cannot send some else out.

If you were to deliver a bigger package that required 2 people, you could have 2 of them go. They walk the same speed but a bigger job gets done in the same time. However you still have to wait.

Note that the point where process become instant depends on the programs you use, the operating system, other programs consuming processor time(such as anti virus)

Triple digit Mhz processors

Now image that a triple digit processor is like a person with a car. That car has the same capacity of the human lets say but your not waiting as long for things to get done and even though the car carries the same amount, more can get done because the car gets there and back faster.

However there is a change of concept here, image that the car gets so fast that when you say go, it gets there and back before you can type another letter. Do you really need the car to go faster? Not really, what you need is a car of the same speed with higher capacity.

Image if you will a truck that goes as fast as the car but has a bigger capacity. On a small load(1 car load or less) the capacity difference is not noticeable. However when you get into say 1 truck load or 10 car loads, then your processing gets done faster with the truck rather than with the car. Even if you were to make a car twice as fast as the truck, if the load was 10 car loads, the truck would still get the project done faster.

You have to ignore some of the concepts of cars/trucks to get this example but it comes down to one thing. That one thing is that if things are starting instantly, something with more capacity(processing power) will be able to do the job faster than a processor doing a smaller amount much faster.