Internet Speed on Processor

Internet Speed on Processor

I'm about to purchase tablet computer. My main purpose will be to browse Internet. So, please tell whether the processor speed has to do anything with the Internet speed. Different tablets have different processor speed like 1GH, 1.2GH, 1.3GH, 1.6GH etc.

The CPU clock alone (assuming same number of cores) is not enough to compare different tablets: you have too look at the whole picture, and consider the amount of available RAM, internal storage, the graphic card, operating system, and so on.

Internet's speed is the rate at which you can transfer data over the Internet. As Jonas Wielicki wrote in his answer, this should not be affected by CPU speed, at least not in a noticeable way.

User experience will be affected, though, because when browsing World Wide Web (which are not the same as the Internet - the former means websites, the latter is a global network used to transmit those, but also to send any other data - file transfers, Skype calls etc.) actual display times are more important than download speed.

Fast Internet connections (either over Wi-Fi or cellular connections) are widely available today and download speeds for most sites aren't that important. Here's a screenshot from Chrome's profiler showing load time breakdown for SuperUser on my current hardware and connection:

As you can see, loading takes only 67 milliseconds, while rendering, painting, running scripts and mysterious other tasks add up to one second. Downloading makes only a fraction of entire load time, as clearly visible on the pie chart. Other steps of displaying a website heavily depend on hardware, so CPU will matter when browsing.

So hardware is important if you're going to use that device for browsing WWW. There is no mobile CPU that will be definitely "fast enough". The higher the frequency is, the better it will perform. Number of cores also matters. Other factors may limit the CPU, like amount of RAM, its speed, storage memory's speed, operating system version and modifications applied by manufacturer.

Not for speeds you currently get via wireless, if you don’t end up having a extraordinary bad wireless chipset.

Machines with about 1 GHz may have problems with gigabit speeds and bad ethernet chipsets (I have heard such reports from people with homeserver systems), but wireless is still some factors away from that.

Mobile internet is even farther away from gigabit speeds, so no issues should occur here.