CPU and system performance

Question 1

what does CPU performance depend on?

Answer 1

clock speed, cores and cache

Question 2

what’s clock speed?

Answer 2

the number of instructions a single processor can carry out per second (Hz)

Question 3

the higher the clock speed…

Answer 3

the greater the number of instructions that can be carried out per second

Question 4

what’s number of cores?

Answer 4

each core in a CPU can process data independently off the rest

Question 5

the more cores a CPU has…

Answer 5

the more instructions it can carry out at once, so the faster it can batch of data

Question 6

what’s cache size?

Answer 6

data storage inside the CPU that’s much faster than RAM

Question 7

CPUs with higher clock speeds, more cores or larger caches have…

Answer 7

better performance but will also be more expensive

Question 8

what does it mean if a computer has too little or more RAM?

Answer 8

• little RAM, may run slowly due to the use of virtual memory
• the more RAM, the more applications or more memory-intensive apps it can smoothly run, making it faster overall

Question 9

what are GPUs?

Answer 9

(graphic processing units) which are specialised circuits for handling graphics and image processing. They relieve the processing load on the CPU, freeing it to do other things.

Question 10

what GPUs do computers have?

Answer 10

basic GPUs integrated onto the motherboard or the CPU. For better graphics perfromance, a dedicated GPU (graphics card) is often use

Question 11

what’s the result of using high-end graphics cards?

Answer 11

they greatly improve performance in graphics-intensive applications, e.g. PC gaming and design software