When you’re shopping for a new computer (which we can help with), one of the factors that always comes up is the processor. When you’re comparing processors, what should you be looking for to help you decide which one you should look at? It used to be that all you had to look at was the mega/gigahertz speed and you were good to go, but things have changed. Here are some things that set them apart from each other.
Core Count: Multi-core processors have been available in some form or another for over 20 years with Intel releasing its first customer focused dual-core processor in 2005 with AMD following suite shortly after. Multi-core processing basically means bundling multiple processors into one, allowing your processor to work on more than one thing at a time (something they had to do mostly linearly before). If the operating system and your software can take advantage of the multiple-cores, it will help performance. Modern operating systems can take advantage of multiple cores, but sometimes software (especially older software) is single-threaded, which means it cannot take advantage of multiple cores as well as some. That being said, it’s still a good rule that the more cores, the better.
Core Types: While it’s generally true that more cores it better, sometimes it’s not. Processor manufacturers are starting to stick different core types onto a singular processor. Intel calls those Performance (or “P”) cores and Efficient (or “E”) cores (see our article that dives into that a bit). While those E-cores are good at doing background and repetitive tasks, they don’t perform as well as the P-Cores. So you’ll want to make sure your processor isn’t all E-Cores as while that processor probably won’t use as much power, it might not be as useful for standard desktop computing use (there are instances where processors with all E-Cores make good server processors for specific tasks, but that’s outside the scope of this article).
Cache Memory: When looking at computer specifications, you generally understand that more RAM is better and helps with computer performance. However, did you know that CPUs have a small amount of their own really-fast built-in RAM as well? Cache memory is a bit of ultrafast memory that the CPU can talk to much quicker than normal system RAM, and this helps with performance of the processor tremendously if it has a lot of it. The problem is that it typically is hard to find the amount of Cache Memory easily, usually requiring a quick Google that will get you to
Frequency: And last but certainly not least, the frequency of the processor also helps as it basically means how many instructions it can handle per-second. So the higher number is generally better. However, most modern processors are built to fluctuate their processor speed based on their usage so they don’t overheat and they use less power. So you’ll want to check the processor specifications to see what the processor’s max frequency and base frequency are, as well as the lower and high end of each type of core (and sometimes they can only hold that higher frequency for short bursts, depending on the cooling mechanisms the computer employs).
You can use various tools on the web to compare specifications and performance between different processors. Intel has their own tool to compare specifications (see this comparison between a same-generation i3 and i5 processor as an example). You can then also plug the processors into UserBenchmark and CPU Benchmark and get good comparisons based on synthetic benchmarks (like this i3 and i5 comparison that shows the roughly 20% advantage the i5 has on UserBenchmark and the same comparison on CPU Benchmarks). While synthetic benchmarks aren’t always indicative of real-world performance differences, they can certainly be used to assist with your shopping experience.