Moreover, having different semiconductor companies competing for sales of a chip can lead to faster improvements in the chip speed and quicker price declines.

Recently, Intel's president, Paul S. Otellini, said the company was changing its strategy to focus less on pure chip speed and more on adding features to its future microprocessors.

The result has been more chip speed at less manufacturing cost, "to take market share away from our competitors," Mr. Bryant said.

Remember back to our earlier discussion of wafers and chip speeds.

Read the small print on the box and make sure the program's requirements - chip speed, storage space, sound card and operating memory - match your system's.

As the market for MP3 music files, sophisticated games and DVD movies grows, a computer's subwoofer capacity is becoming almost as essential as chip speed.

The megahertz rating is an indicator of chip speed, with faster generally being better.

The technique can increase chip speed as much as 35 percent with a 15 percent reduction in energy consumption, the researchers say.

In general, faster chip speeds are better if you plan to use the computer for things like animation-intensive video games, digital video production or image-editing and illustration programs.

Steady advances in chip speeds and miniaturization have enabled manufacturers to begin putting more computing power in smaller devices.