The Insides of a Computer - What everything means
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The CPU or the central processing unit:
The first and most important hardware component is the CPU or the central processing unit. The CPU is the main workhorse of the computer. This is where all of your information and data is going through before you can visualize anything on the monitor. What you are reading right now, every word, ever letter, has already gone through the processor. It is what makes all of the calculations at the microsecond (1 millionth of a second) or even nanosecond (1 billionth of a second) level.
There are 4 major components to look for in a CPU: the speed of the processor, the number of cores, its front side bus rating and its cache memory. The speed of a CPU is determined primarly by the manufacturing of the processor (either AMD or Intel). The speeds range anywhere from 1 gigahertz (GHz) or 1 billion cycles per second to over 3GHz. Generally, the higher the speed rating for a processor, however, it is not the case for multi-core processors. As of this past decade, both CPU manufacturers were able to produce multi-core processors, essentially putting 2 to 4 processors onto 1 microchip. With more cores on a single processor, the chip is able to handle more work/calculations than a single core processor. While a processor itself is a powerful tool, it is only 1 component of an entire computer. Because it is the gateway of all data transfer, a front side bus (FSB) is needed for data transfer speeds from the CPU to the RAM or northbridge chip. This FSB is built onto the CPU and can be rated from 800MHz to 1600MHz and likewise to the core speed, a faster FSB will ensure faster data transfer rates on the motherboard. The cache is also built onto the CPU as temporary memory storage for even faster transfer rates. Since the size of a CPU is fairly small (2 square inches), the cache size is very limited (anywhere from 1MB to 12MB) and an increase of cache will significantly increase the performance as well as the price. Combined, there should be a balance between the speed, cores, FSB and cache. While the best processor will have the highest performance, it will also set you back more than $1000. Therefore, for the basic user, the most important component of a CPU is the number of cores followed by speed, FSB and cache.
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