Are faster processors better than slower ones?
Not necessarily as there are no guarantees that a faster system doesnt have other factors that mitigate against accurate timing. For example drivers, add-in cards, installed software, background tasks will have an effect on your ability to obtain accurate presentation and response timings. New Pentium 4s with Hyper Threading may also display strange results as they emulate a dual processor system. Testing has suggested that such systems whilst having a very high clock rate, e.g. 3.0Ghz, may actually sample at half the rate expected as each virtual processor receives alternate clock ticks and a given piece of software typically runs tied with its affinity to one processor and hence half of the clock rate.
