The fastest processor money can buy

What is the fastest processor today you can buy with "infinite" money? It's Intel again and Xeon. It has more than 25K benchmark points on CPU benchmarking. This processor is not designed for the home user, but for servers that need to handle huge amount of data.

But you are interested in a processor you can buy and use wiht every day computers. In that case the fastest is the Intel Core i7-5960X. With 4 cores and 4 threads, this machine when combined with an SSD drive has enough power to process everything you need as a home user or office worker. The problem is always the price. The most expensive Intel processors are too expensive for the money asked.

The best price to performance processors are always AMD, at least so far. The best in this category is the AMD 8350 8 Core processor. It cannot match Intel in terms of brute processing power, but since the price is so small compared with Intel, you can buy 5 of these processors and get much more speed than you ever could with Intel.

In a future post I will explain how to take advantage of networking processor to process use amounts of data with AMD processors.

Is this the right time to buy a top class processor? The fastest ones will always be too expensive. You will be served better by buying a not so fast processor for around 200$ and upgrade it every two years when the processing power is doubled for the same amount of dollars.