CPU and System Performance Flashcards
What does CPU performance depend on?
Clock Speed, Cores and Cache
What is clock speed?
The number of instructions a single processor core can carry out per second (Hz).
What is the clock speed of most desktop computers?
Most desktop computers will have around 3.5Ghz (3.5 billion instructions per second)
What is clock speed measured in?
megahertz (MHz)- 1,000,000 hertz (1,000,000 cycles per second)
gigahertz (gHz)- 1,000,000,000 hertz ( 1,000,000,000 cycles per second)
What are cores?
Each core in the CPU process data independently of the rest. The more cores a CPU has the more instructions it can carry out at once, so the faster it can process a batch of data.
What is the Cache?
The cache is data storage inside the CPU that is much faster than RAM. The Larger the CPU cache the faster the CPU can access data it needs to process.
What is the effect on having a CPU with higher clock speed, more cache and larger cache?
It will have better performance but it will be more expensive
What is the effect on having more RAM
I can mean a faster and smoother system.
What is the effect of having more RAM
The more applications/ memory-intensive applications it can smoothly run, making it faster overall.
How can you upgrade your RAM
It is a matter of replacing the RAM sticks with higher capacity ( or higher speed ones)
What happens when your upgrade an already plenty-full RAM
If Computer has plenty RAM already then increasing RAM may make no difference.
What does GPU stand for?
Graphic Processing Unit
What is a GPU?
Specialized circuits for handling graphic and image processing.
What is the job of a GPU?
Help CPUs process images and relieve processing load on CPU freeing it up to do other things
Where is the GPU located.
It is integrated onto the motherboard or the CPU.
