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Product Survey: Processors
The CPU is the brains of your computer, and the faster it goes, the faster you'll be able to get on with whatever it is you're doing. The market is dominated by two big manufacturers, Intel and AMD, but the decisions don't stop there--is a dual-, a triple- or a quad-core processor best for you? And if you're upgrading, how do you know that a new processor is compatible with your existing hardware?
Régis Jehl
Updated: December 15, 2008
Updated: December 15, 2008
Cooling Down
When you buy a processor on its own (rather than as part of your computer), it nearly always comes with a heatsink to keep it at a reasonable temperature.
The fans that processor manufacturers ship are usually reasonably efficient at cooling the CPUs they were designed for, but they're not necessarily very quiet about it.
Don't panic, though, as it's easy to install an alternative that's quieter and--often--more effective!
You can find out more about these components in our Product Survey: Heatsinks, and compare them to one another in our Product Face-Offs.
The fans that processor manufacturers ship are usually reasonably efficient at cooling the CPUs they were designed for, but they're not necessarily very quiet about it.
Don't panic, though, as it's easy to install an alternative that's quieter and--often--more effective!
You can find out more about these components in our Product Survey: Heatsinks, and compare them to one another in our Product Face-Offs.
The latter has cornered around 75% of the market for PC processors, and now makes all of Apple's CPUs too.
Intel's current dominance doesn't mean its products are necessarily better-suited to everybody's needs.
Indeed, with rapid advances in technology, both AMD and Intel rapidly update their range of products, and at any given moment each manufacturer has a selection of different products on its books.
How many cores?
Most of the processors available today are 'multi-core', meaning they essentially have more than one processor on a single chip.
The idea is straightforward: putting two separate processors next to each other to work in parallel means--in theory at least--that a computer can complete a given task twice as fast.
However, for this to work, the software you're using--whether for productivity or gaming--must be written to take advantage of the additional processors.
Some software, like Adobe's CS3 and CS4, for instance, is specially adapted to use the extra processing power that's available.
When using these tools, performance should improve according to how many cores there are, and a dual-core processor really will be twice as fast as a single processor, and a quad-core processor four times as fast.
Other software isn't always configured in the same way, however, and although some games can handle two cores, they rarely manage to support four.
How fast?
For a long time, a processor's clock speed was the only statistic worth paying attention to, but things are a little more complicated these days.
To take a complicated example, Intel currently offers six different 2.66 GHz chips, and with good reason, as they all perform differently.
Some have extra cache, others feature dedicated extensions and extra instructions that allow them to get more done at the same speed and others are manufactured in the most minute detail to allow them to use less power.
These variations can change things so much that it's perfectly possible that a 2.83 GHz processor released in the past few months actually works faster than a slightly older 3 GHz chip.
It's best to consider the speed in GHz of a processor as a way of distinguishing models within the same product family, as comparing chips that run at the 'same' speed is not always easy.
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