Welcome to your ultimate assistive technology resource


Do The Differences In CPUs Really Matter?

CPU manufacturing is one of the mostare coming out with quad speed pushes and
competitive areas of computer world. In thebase 200MHz which results with 800MHz FSB
end, the overall performance of your laptoplike  the  new  P4.
or your desktop depends on your central
processing unit. Parallel to the demands ofThe numbers you would see under the name
the users, we can say that CPUs traveled a"Micron" in a CPU comparison table is
long  way  from  386s  to  P4s  and  AMDs.basically the size of the transistors. As the
number get smaller, the manufacturers can put
The cache is generally the most decisivemore and more on the CPU die. The smaller
factor in the tradeoff equation between thetransistors you have on your CPU, the smaller
price and performance. Considering the L2the CPU die becomes. The smaller the CPU die,
cache on some of the chips, you can easilyless power is required and less heat is
understand that Athlon, P4 and PIII, havingproduced.
256K or more L2 cache are the once with
higher performance, in other words powerThe CPU instruction set is the total code
chips.which tells your CPU how to process its data.
The more sets you have on your CPU, the more
Looking at the budget chips, you immediatelyefficient it is most likely to be. However,
notice that Celeron has 128K and the Duronon this point Intel (Pentium) and AMD does
only has 64K. Celeron is actually almost likenot follow the same path. Intel made the
a PIII with half the cache disabled. Thesefirst attempt to improve the basic
numbers shows that the main budget issue forinstruction set by adding the MMX support for
CPU manufacturers is to put enough cash onmultimedia.
the  chip.
The difference's between the CPU's are
You should consider the difference betweengetting smaller as each company sees the
the bus speeds: in the case of Athlon and P4,advantages of their rivals technology and
the bus speed between the Cache and the CPUtries to either use or emulate it. It is
can be 200 or 400 MHz respectively. This canreally hard to choose which one is better. So
give your system a major boost when you area good advice would be let your wallet decide
using cache intensive utilities. The new CPUswhich CPU your system will use.



1 A B C D 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 96 97 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114