Choosing The Right CPU Processor
Bus speed
Intel Pentium D
Bus speed is the speed at which information passes from the chip onto the motherboard, and around the motherboard. The faster this is, the faster the information can be passed. Much is said about how clock speed of a computer processor makes a difference, but for a more overall improvement in speed, a faster bus speed makes a big difference.
The bus speed which is a clock speed for outside the computer processor is boosted by the chip makers to allow more speed. For a computer processor nowadays the external bus is 200MHz, but this works out to 800MHz by not just doing things on the tick of the clock, but on the half tick and quarter tick.
The core
AMD Athlon 64 FX
The core is the central part of the processor. An actual chip comprises the core, some L1, L2 and L3 cache memory as well as some other things. When you compare computer processors they all have these components and more.
The core is the part that results in new chips, or a new range. It is the brain part of the chip.
In the development of new cores, the cost is high, so to make the most of the effort, a single core may be used again and again, sometimes in different models, but certainly within the same range, but just at higher clock speeds. The pushing of clock speeds usually goes as far as the company can safely push it before moving on to a new core.
Within a range there are often cases where the same model can only be distinguished by it’s core. The AMD Athlon 64 3200+ comes in a few different varieties, the Winchester, Newcastle, Clawhammer and Venice core. The Winchester, Newcastle and Clawhammer all support most of the new technologies. The Newcastle and Clawhammer use 130nm technology, while the Winchester uses 90nm. The Newcastle and Winchester support 250MHz while the Clawhammer only 200MHz. The Clawhammer is well known older core, which is still used in the gaming targeted FX chips. The Winchester is known for it’s very cool temperatures with a standard fan, allowing great overclocking. The Venice is newer adding SSE3 technology to the chip. The Clawhammer comes for socket 754, the Venice and Winchester come for socket 939, while the Newcastle has both versions. Quite an ordeal to compare computer processors of one company.
So as you can see there is a lot to bear in mind, but I will wrap things up with my choice of processors for the moment, so you can compare computer processors.