Magoo's Wise Words
Guide to Buying a Computer

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How to pick out each part

Processor

I buy my processor first, because that will determine what kind of motherboard you need. The first decision about a processor is if you want to get an AMD processor or an Intel. Intel tends to be more stable and produce less heat. AMD is usually cheaper and faster. AMD processors run at lower clock speeds than Intel chips, but they actually process more data per second. AMD is slowly becoming the industry leader, but both processors are well worth the price and I doubt you will regret your decision either way.

Here are some features common to both chips:

Processor speed- measured in GHz. In general, the faster the processor, the more data it can move per minute. Although this number isn’t nearly important as it used to be, it is still the main selling point. You want this number to be high, but you will pay dearly to have the absolute top of the line.

Processor speed is rarely the bottle neck in computer performance, so don't overspend here. Just get something reasonable and save your money for more important parts. You don't want the rock-bottom cheapest processor, but the fastest, top of the line processors are not going to give you enough extra performance to justify their cost.

Dual Core- This means there the are two processing units built onto one chip. This can lead to huge performance gains if you are doing any multitasking. Dual core processors have even been proven to outperform dual processor computers.

Socket #- Modern processors use a Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) socket to attach the processor to the motherboard. The sockets are named for the number of pins that it can accept from the processor (i.e. Socket 939 has 939 pins). You need to buy a motherboard with the exact type of socket as the processor you want. Other than that, it doesn't affect the performance of the processor directly.

While the type of socket doesn't affect performance directly, the more pins a processor has the more up to date it is. AMD started making 64-bit processors with 754 pins. They then moved the memory controller onto the processor and changed it to 939 pins. Therefore, a Socket 939 processor will give noticeably higher performance than a Socket 754 because of the improved memory management.

32 bit vs 64 bit- The first processors built into personal computer handled data in 16-bit chunks. In order to improve performance for increasingly larger programs, chip makers moved to 32-bit processors several years ago. Recently, they have taken the next step to 64-bit processors.

While these 64-bit processors can provide significant performance gains for programs designed to run on them, there aren't many programs designed for 64-bit yet. You will also need a 64-bit operating system to take full advantage of it. While most of the big operating systems (Windows, Linux, etc.) now offer 64-bit versions, not all of the drivers and utilities have caught up yet.

Fortunatly, 64-bit processors are fully backward compatible with 32-bit systems and programs, so you can continue to use your old operating system and programs but be ready to upgrade to 64-bit when the time is right. It's a matter of budget which way you go. If you can afford it, I recommend getting a 64-bit processor because then you are prepared to keep with the times.

That's the basics on processors. There are a few more processor features that are not as important to your decision as the ones above but you may find useful. If you are interested, click here. Otherwise, we will concern ourselves with the motherboard next.

Next =>[Magoo's Guide to Computer Shopping- Page 4, Picking a motherboard]