CPUs Processors
The CPU is often called the main processor of your PC. CPU stands for Central Processing Unit.
When you are buying a PC the main selling feature is always the speed of the CPU.
You will notice it will say 2.0 Hz,2.4Ghz or 3Ghz.
The truth is that the CPU is set at these speeds and has no this relevance on what else you could have inside your PC.
There are two main desktop CPU manufacturers, they are Intel and AMD. Both of these companies have a power CPU and a Budget CPU.
The Power CPU's are the Pentium 4 from Intel and the Athlon XP from AMD.
The budget CPU's are the Celeron from Intel and the Duron from AMD.
Price is a big factor between these CPU's. Check the latest prices of these CPU's.
The method by which CPUs are marketed these days often revolves around extra bells, knobs and whistles and all things that will blind you with science.
These include, but aren't limited to, SSE instructions, branch prediction, Hyper-Threading and cache size .
None of these things are essential for a processor to work, they are just bolt-on parts focused on one thing only: making the processor do more things in shorter amounts of time.
Now a breath of fresh air from AMD we have the latest announcement.
AMD says that increased environmental concerns and a move towards sleeker and slimmer desktop machines have prompted the development of the new low power versions of its desktop ranges.
As PCs are moving out of the SOHO environment and into the living areas, the computer must have the same aesthetics as any other consumer electronics device.
. This means small, silent devices that are easily cooled.
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Socket Types
Each range of CPU fits into a specific socket on your motherboard. motherboards are design with one socket type and cannot be made to take another. Current AMD CPU's use a socket A connection. Pentium 4 CPU's use socket 478 (because the CPU has 478 pins to connect to the motherboard)
Socket Type |
Compatible Processors |
Socket 7 |
Original Pentium's, Cyrix 686, Cyrix MII, AMD K6, AMD K6-2 and K6-III |
Socket 370 |
Intel Celeron, Intel PIII (not Cartridge), Cyrix III |
Slot 1 |
Intel PII, Intel PIII (cartridge only) |
Slot A |
AMD Athlon (Cartridge only) |
Socket A |
AMD Athlon Thunderbird (not Cartridge), AMD Duron, AMD Athlon XP |
Socket 423 |
Intel P4 |
Socket 478 |
Intel P4 (2nd Gen) |
Socket 734 |
Athlon 64 |
Socket 939 |
Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2 |
Socket 940 |
Athlon 64-fx, AMD Opteron |
The CPU's Cache
The Cache on the CPU is a small amount of very fast memory which is situated on the CPU. the cache memory is very expensive which is why its available in very limited amounts. It ranges from about 64Kb to 512Kb and soon 1Mb cache chips will be coming. For more information on CPU cache and how it works we have just the article