megahertz

Unit of measure that equals a frequency of 1 million cycles per second. (See also Hertz and kilohertz)

A Megahertz is 1 million complete cycles per second and is used to measure transmission speeds of electronic devices. The most common area you'll see Megahertz used is in measuring processor speed (like a 500Mhz PentiumIII). However, this only measures the clock speed of the computer's microprocessor - not the overall speed. Because of this, a PowerPC G4 500 is actually faster than a Pentium III 800 in most computations. Mac users love to stress this point. Abbreviation: "Mhz".