What is a CPU?

Contents What does a CPU look like What does the CPU do How do you measure the speed of a CPU Types of CPU Socket Types CPU Cache More What Is Articles Get Prices on the Latest CPU's

This is a beginners guide to CPU's. Please use the articles menu if you require more in depth articles. The CPU is often called the main processor of your PC. CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. When you are buying a PC from a high street store the main selling feature is always the speed of the CPU. You will notice it will say 2.4Ghz or 3Ghz PC. The truth is that the CPU is set at these speeds and has no relevance on what else you could have inside your PC.

What does the CPU look like?

The CPU will likely be the larger of the chips on the mainboard inside your PC. If you have bought the PC from new the CPU will be covered by a heatsink and fan. The heatsink and fan are extremely important. Without these the CPU would get too hot to work and possibly melt or burn out. Be very careful to replaces the fan if you remove it to have a look at your CPU.
 

What does the CPU do?

The CPU is the main processor of your PC. Everything that goes on in your PC at some point goes through your CPU. In reference to the human body the CPU is brain of the PC. It is artificial thinking but the CPU is where all the logic is applied. As a very basic example computer code is basically mathematics. if you wanted to calculate 2+7 you would need an input an output and a processor to add the logic. The logic in this case is simple addition. You would input 2+7 on a keyboard. This would be registered and sent to the CPU for analysis. The CPU would see that the addition logic is required and use this inbuilt logic to send the answer of 9.

How do you measure the speed of a CPU?

The CPU's speed is a measure of MHz (megahertz) or more recently GHz (gigahertz). a chip with a megahertz rating of 900Mhz would be able to complete 900Million cycles every second. However don't be fully deceived by this figure alone. This figure only shows how many clock cycles the CPU can do in a second. How much being done in each cycle is another matter. I urge you to check out some benchmarks on CPU's before you you decide that the one with a faster rating has the best performance. Unfortunately the need for speed and higher clock rating have driven the CPU industry to work on this factor without really seeing what the performance of these chips are like.

Types of CPU

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 and Pentium D from Intel and the Athlon 64 and X2 from AMD. The budget CPU's are the Celeron from Intel and the Sempron from AMD. Price is a big factor between these CPU's. Check the latest prices of these CPU's below.

AMD X2 (Dual core CPU)
AMD Athlon 64
AMD Sempron
Intel Pentium D
Intel Pentium 4
Intel Celeron

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)
 

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. How does CPU cache work.

More articles in the What is Category

What is your Motherboard
What is your Graphics card
What is your RAM
What is your Hard Disk

Still unsure? please ask at the PantherProducts Forums where we may be able to help you out?