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This page is intended to answer some of your questions about processors and how to compare them. Click on the questions to jump directly to the answers. What do all these processors mean?
What do all these processors mean? The processor is the main brain in the computer. There are 2 main manufacturers Intel and AMD. Both these manufacturers have a range of different processors, some are single, dual, triple and quad core and recently 6 cores. This means effectively multiple processors on the same chip so they will multi task better, whether they make a particular program run better depends very much on how that program was designed. If the program is designed to share out the work between different processors, it will run better on a multi core, if not, it may run better on a faster chip with fewer cores. We frequently see quad core processors at a slower clock speed than a cheaper dual core, for many games it may be better to go for the faster dual core. The difference is often slight however and in the long term multi core processors are going to win. In general the faster the clock speed the better but the chip architecture is also important so for instance between a Celeron and a Core processor at the same speed, the Core would be better, as usual, you get what you pay for. Intel. Intel has 5 main groups: Atom
Celeron
Pentium
Core
Xeon
AMD AMD's budget range is the Sempron then there's the Athlon dual core or quad core and the Phenom, available as triple, quad or 6 core. There is also the Opteron which is used mainly for servers Sempron All single core, range of processor speeds very good budget processors, run XP, vista or Windows 7 no problem, as above best to go for at least 2GB RAM with vista. As with the Celeron, good for office applications, photo editing etc, start to struggle on the faster games and video editing. The Semron runs on a Socket AM2 motherboard Athlon The Athlon, is available in Socket AM2 and AM3 at the moment, AM2 is being phased out and replaced with AM3. There are still a few single core Athlons available but most are dual core and there are triple and quad core versions in Socket AM3. Generally the clock speeds are similar to the Phenom range but the Phenoms have more cache memory. This means memory like RAM but actually is part of the processor circuitry so it's even faster than RAM and helps to speed up calculations. Phenom The phenom is available in triple, quad core and 6 core. The triple core is really a quad core with 1 core disabled. A variety of speeds is available. Generally the Phenom offers more "Bang per buck" than the Intel core quad processors. Both are extremely good but you tend to get a bit more for the money with AMD. Phenoms are available in AM2 and AM3 but as above, the AM2 is being phased out. The speed of the processor is the "clock speed" or the frequency at which the processor operates. In broad terms, the faster the clock speed (this is the 2.4 or 2.8Ghz you see mentioned), the faster the computer goes - in broad terms. Beware that some manufacturers put fast processors like a 3.0 GHz Pentium into a budget PC to make the advert look good, this is called "Going for the Headline". Certainly, this will perform quite well but not nearly as well as if you put the same processor on a really good motherboard with a really good graphic card, lots of RAM and a high speed hard disk. Overall speed is a combination of all these things It gets a bit more complicated when we talk about the architecture of the chip and the amount of cache memory is built into it. Sufficed to say that a 1.7Ghz Pentium or Core is faster than a 1.7 Ghz Celeron even though they have the same clock speed. When we compare the Intel to the AMD, AMD say their method of doing calculations is different and so ends up with better performance at a lower clock speed. To be fair, all the benchmarking tests carried out by magazines and so on bear this out. So, we end up with the Athlon XP getting numbers like 250, 260 etc at first they put these numbers to line up with the Pentiums but now there seems to be very little analogy. Obviously for the same model with the same socket, the higher the number the better. However, the only way to do a direct comparison is to look at a test such as http://www.cpubenchmark.net/index.php even tests like these can be quite difficult to interpret, what we always try to do is get the best value, the very latest thing is usually the fastest but it's also 5 times the price of one that's been around for a few months.
How many Cores do I need? In practise, most of us don't notice or really need more than 1 core. Windows manages the loading between them, in theory the more cores you have, the better it will be for multi tasking, in practise it's quite possible to run with a dozen windows open (normal everyday applications) on a single core processor providing it's running well with enough RAM. It's only when the computer is pushed hard that we really notice the difference. Games, heavy graphical applications, video editing, CAD etc all push the computer and it's then that you really notice some extra power. With multiple cores, it's possible for the computer to share the load, and multitask more effectively, particularly on heavier applications. It's very difficult to give an overall rule but generally any of the usual office applications, email, internet browsing etc are handled very well by the low end processors, preferably these days always look for a minimum of 2GB RAM. For other applications, complex games RAM is Random Access Memory, the processor does all the calculations and is discussed above but it needs to be fed data to work on in a constant stream. RAM is the fastest way of doing this, if you can hold lots of stuff in RAM, the data transfer rate to the processor is very quick. If the computer runs out of space in RAM, it saves some data down onto the hard disk into the Windows "Swap File". Even with a really fast hard disk this is much, much, much slower than reading it straight from RAM. there are however lots of different types of RAM, again its' speed is measured as the frequency it operates at. There are also physical differences in the type of slot they fit into. Older computers may still have 168 pin SDRAM this started at 66 Mhz and the most recent is the PC133 (133 Mhz) After that was DDR or double data rate RAM and is called PC2100 (266Mhz), PC2700 (333Mhz) and lately PC3200 (400Mhz). Next was DDR2 at speeds up to 800Mhz The latest one is DDR3, which started out last year at very high prices but has now become very reasonable, clock speeds for DDR3 are between 1066 and 1800Mhz Basically, the faster the better and the more you have the better. For most purposes these days 1GB is the norm and is more than adequate, Windows XP should have at least 512MB. To give you an idea, my first PC had 4 MB and that was a lot at the time. Given the current prices of RAM, we recommend Minimum of 1GB for XP, 1GB and minimum 2GB for Vista or for Windows 7. Going above 3GB is pointless unless you have a 64 bit operating system, a 32 bit operating system cannot recognise more than 4GB, see the Which operating system section.
The Graphics or Video card is what sends the picture to your monitor. Games that are really heavy on graphics especially 3D like Quake or the latest driving games would benefit from a better graphics card and a faster processor. The better your graphics card, the smoother your moving images will be, for most ordinary applications it's hard to tell the difference from one graphics card to another. Many of the motherboards in our (and most other suppliers) systems have built in graphics cards which use some of the system memory (RAM) for operation. A few years ago, generally this meant poorer performance, and it was far better to have a separate graphics card with its' own memory. Bear in mind that I'm talking about computers that had 16 or 32 MB of RAM and graphics cards with only 2 or 4 MB. Nowadays, the onboard graphics have improved greatly, the system RAM is faster and there is a lot more of it so using some of it for video is not as important. You can always add a graphics card if you want to at a later date and disable the onboard graphics but for 90% or more of people and applications, onboard graphics are sufficient. Generally speaking, if you want a computer for general purposes, onboard graphics are fine, for gaming, go for one with a separate graphic card. The amount of memory on the graphic card is important but often can be overshadowed by the series (which chip the graphic processor uses) prices range from about £30 to several hundred, price is usually a good guide, a reasonable mid range card should cost £70 to £100 but gaming enthusiasts often pay much more. Computer Aided Design (CAD) is also very demanding on graphic cards. The hard disk is where all your information and programs are stored. The amount of storage space you have is measured in GigaBytes (GB) One Gigabyte is about 1000 Megabytes (MB). Early hard drives were 30 or 40 MB, even a couple of years ago a 6 GB drive was really big. Now the minimum is 160GB and most systems have 160GB or more. For most people 160GB is plenty. If you want to edit video or store lots of music or pictures on your hard drive then you may need a larger drive (they're not physically bigger, they all look the same on the outside). The other important aspect of hard drives is the speed of data access. This is governed by the design of the drive and the speed of rotation of the disks. Most current disks run at 7200 RPM, high speed drives are available which run at 10,000. The greatest significance with hard drives at the moment is IDE or SATA - IDE is the older type with a 40 or 80 way ribbon cable (looks like a 2 inch wide ribbon) SATA is newer technology and has much faster data transfer. There is also now SATA II - a bit faster again. The importance of this access time is touched on in What RAM? above, basically windows uses RAM first to keep data in memory, when there's not enough RAM left, it writes some of the data down to the hard drive and reads it back when necessary. You also need to read lots of stuff from the hard drive in the first place. This process of reading data is much slower than reading directly from RAM even with a really fast hard disk, so this can be a bottleneck in your system. Overall then, you need a hard disk with enough space on it to keep all your programs and files and the faster the access time the better. There are 5 main choices for operating systems, Apple, Linux and Microsoft XP, Vista or Windows 7 Apple Apple is available on Apple Mac laptop or Desktop computers, some Apple computers now also have the possibility of a dual boot, to run either XP or the Apple OS. We don't usually sell Apple computers but can get them if desired. Apple computers are widely used in the graphics and publishing domains, they tend to be more expensive than PCs. Personally I prefer Microsoft but it's a question of what you're used to and what suits you. Linux Linux was created by Linus Torvalds and released as an open source operating system. This means he made the source code available to anyone so they could use it or add to and improve it. As a result there are several versions or distros available, usually as free downloads from the internet. Most of them include some programs like Open Office. Linux is reasonably easy to install but be prepared fro some searching to solve problems like drivers etc. Since there is no single manufacturer, help usually comes from forums on the net. For something that's free Linux is very very good but if you want ease of use and universal compatibility, windows is better. Many netbooks now come with Linux preinstalled, this keeps the price down but if you prefer Windows, double check before picking up a bargain. Windows XP or Vista Windows 7 The current operating system from Microsoft is Windows 7. Windows 7 is what Vista should have been at first, it is easier to use and more stable than Vista. XP is still available but is due to be phased out. In a new computer I would certainly recommend Windows 7, as an upgrade it depends on what you're upgrading from, from XP you need to be sure that your PC is up to it, a minimum of 2GB RAM is recommended, given that XP is a very good, stable operating system I would stick with it. Upgrading from Vista could be more worthwhile but you need to buy a Windows 7 licence (about £90) and install it. |
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