Computer speed is a story of layers of bottlenecks. CPU speed is just one of those potential bottlenecks. As it turns out, CPU speed has not been a bottleneck for overall computer speed for some time (over a decade), the modern bottlenecks are GPU performance, memory size and bandwidth, permanent storage latency, and network latency.
All of those roadblocks have been dramatically lowered in the last 10, 5, and even 1 years. DDR3, improvements in memory access architecture (sandy bridge, ivy bridge, etc.), GPU improvements, and SSDs have all bumped up average computing performance, even while the clock speed of CPUs has stagnated.
All of those roadblocks have been dramatically lowered in the last 10, 5, and even 1 years. DDR3, improvements in memory access architecture (sandy bridge, ivy bridge, etc.), GPU improvements, and SSDs have all bumped up average computing performance, even while the clock speed of CPUs has stagnated.