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by HRAR2727 on April 24th, 2004

HRAR2727

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What should I look for when buying a processor?

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Answers. 3 helpful answers below.

  • by Darth Belal on April 23rd, 2005

    Darth Belal

    While raw processor speed can be an indicator of how fast a computer chip is,but it's only part of the story. To get the most bang for the buck, you will have to look at two other factors.

    First off, is the L2 cache memory (it used to be seperate from the CPU, located a short distance away, but now it's on the chip itself). This is a tiny amount of memory that is built onto the chip itself. It conists of Static Random Access Memory (SRAM), which is as fast as any CPU on the market, but it's also very expensive (which is why DRAM, in one form or another, is used for computer memory on the motherboard) so only a tiny amount is used. Anyway, when the CPU needs data, the first place it will look to is the L2 cache as its right next to the chip, if it's not there, it'll go to the memory sticks on the motherboard, which slows down processing time, the more L2 Cache there is on a chip, the more likely data will be there for the processor when it needs it which makes for faster processing.

    The second thing you need to look for is the Front Side Bus speed. This is the speed in which the CPU can communicate with the rest of the computer (main memory, chipsets, AGP port). The faster the FSB, the faster data can be transimitted to and from the CPU. If you have two computers that have a 2.8 gig processor speed but one computer has a FSB speed of 400 MHz and you have another computer that has a FSB speed of 800 MHz, the computer with the higher MHz will allow to CPU to communicate with the rest of the computer at twice the speed of the computer with the slower FSB, you get the point.

    If you have x amount of dollars to spend on a computer chip, always, ALWAYS go for the chip with the larger L2 cache and the higher FSB speed, even if you have to sacrifice raw CPU gigahertz to get it, you'll have a computer that can throughput data faster than one that is hobbled by tiny L2 cache amounts and hokey FSB speeds.

    The SLOWEST of todays CPUs are way faster than any other component on the computer, what you want to do is get the most data to the CPU faster for it to crunch and have a wide open FSB for the CPU to send it out to the rest of the mobo.

    One more thing, main memory (RAM) is also crucial to the speed of your computer. Do NOT, under any circumstances, go for a computer that has only 128 MB of RAM and is running Windows XP, I've seen these beasts sold by various computer companies and they should be ashamed of themselves! The operating system alone will suck up all that RAM and then you'll be stuck. What happens is that when the CPU needs data, it first looks in the L2 cache, if it's not there, it goes to RAM memory, if it's not there (and it probably won't be with 128 MB of memory), then the computer does what is called virtual memory. Which uses the hard disks as RAM. Once a computer starts using virtual memory, processing time slows to a crawl and you are more likely to get errors. The absolute minimum of RAM you want is 256 MB and that is only if the only thing you do with your computer is surf the 'net and send e-mail. 512 is much better, and if you are playing some of the more modern games or are operating some of the more data intensive programs a gig of RAM could be called for.

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  • by JosephN on May 4th, 2004

    JosephN

    Benchmarks. The frequncy (MHz or GHz) of a processor is a very poor indicator of its performance. Because of the different architectures used, an AMD processor at 2.0 GHz can perform as well as or better than an Intel processor at 3.0 GHz. The best way to judge a CPU is by comparison benchmarking. Check out www.anandtech.com and/or www.tomshardware.com for a start.

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  • by Divya_J on March 26th, 2012

    Divya_J

    I look at the speed of the processor, size of the memory cache, sockets it is compatible with and the price. If the processor speed and memory cache size exceed the requirements of the most intensive program that I plan to use on the computer on a regular basis and the processor is within my budget and it will fit on my preferred motherboard, I get it

    I would suggest you to go for Intel Atom processor as it's much faster than any other like AMD.

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