So I've been reading posts here, and the Newegg deals that Ex has posted.
I have to say, I haven't paid enough attention to computer specs as I should. All I know is Harddrive space, Memeory Space, and the size of the monitor ><".

I'm going to call myself an UBER noob at this.. and I want your help!

Can somebody please explain the Specs listed from the website: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115539

• CPU type - wut is it?
  
• Memory - does this mean the amount of memory it can handle at a given time? How does this factor in when I'm gaming?
  
• Graphics Card - This one confuses me because of all the numbers and diff ways of naming them... For example... GeForce 9000 vs GeForce 9600 .. which one's better? Wut do the numbers represent?
  
• CPU Speed - diff between memory and graphics card?
  
• Video Memory - ??
  
• CPU FSB
  
• CPU L2 Cache
  
• Memory Speed - wut? What's DDR2 667 mean?
  

Before, I don't wry about this, as long as I buy a desktop that works.. but Now, I'm beginning to think about this more, because it IS expensive, and I REALLY want to play SC2 at its best. Moreover, i'm also considering a laptop (I've never had one!! omg!) So.. reading the posts here.. I suddenly have a massive info overload..

Please help!
~Unholy

First of all, you can easily google all this.

CPU - Typically manufactured by Intel or AMD. "Central Processing Unit" They currently come with a number of new technologies, but the main gist is this: it's analogous to the engine in a car. Modern processors have anywhere from 1-4 cores in a typical home unit, and each core is given a rating in hertz, where 1 hz = 1 cycle per second, or 1 action per second. 1 Megahertz, MHz, = 1 million hertz, GHz = 1 billion Hertz. The main properties to evaluate when choosing a CPU is the number of cores, clock speed (typically in GHz nowadays), and possibly the size of the caches. A Cache is a small amount of memory that the CPU has adjacent so that it doesn't have to make a call to the RAM if its going to reuse certain data, drastically reducing the time it takes for certain calculations.

Memory - Typically refers to Random Access Memory, or RAM for short. This memory is used to run games and other applications, store temporary data for the CPU and many other miscellaneous tasks. Hard data like songs, music, and videos are not stored in the RAM, except maybe for short periods of time while they're in use. The main properties of RAM are the memory clock speed (again in hertz), the type of RAM, like DDR, DDR2, DDR3, and the timings, which include numbers like CAS latency. You can google this one.
The second most common type of memory is the hard disk, where all the hard data like operating system files, movies music ect, are stored. The main property is simply its size and perhaps its rotational speed, in rpms, since that reduces access time with greater speeds.

Graphics Card - Numbers that the companies call their card are useless. They do not contain any useful information about the processing units in the card. For example, A Geforce 9500 is NOT better than a Radeon HD 4850, despite the larger number. To truly compare their capabilites, you need to compare the same data as CPU almost. Graphics cards typically have a lower clock speed than a CPU, but many more cores in order to compute many things in parallel. They also typically have their own dedicated memory -- just like RAM except only the graphics card can access it, and its a little higher quality usually, like a CPU cache. Use a site like this http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&pgno=0 to compare graphics cards.

I'll finish this later unless someone else wants to pick up where I left off. I gotta run to class.

• CPU type - Intel Core 2 Duo T6400(2.00GHz)
• Memory - For gaming—I believe— DirectX will store textures and such on the RAM and some games require more of it to store it all
• Graphics Card - What Vrael said, http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&pgno=0
• CPU Speed - I don't know what you were asking for, but an easy way to look at CPU speed is the Core, Duo, and Quad. For gaming you would want the Duo; however, if you were looking in the long run, you would buy a quad with the exception that most games will not take advantage of the quad processor. ( atm... )
• Video Memory - 1024 MB, acts like RAM and may hold backbuffers, overlays, and GPU programs. This is found on the graphics card.
• CPU FSB - Dunno
• CPU L2 Cache - Dunno
• Memory Speed - 3,200 Mb/s

Most games will make the system requirements very plain and simple. If you go here and look at the second box, you will notice in the processor section that a Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz (minimum requirement) is not near as good as a Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz (recommended requirement).
That is also a decent place to see if you're computer can run a game.

• CPU FSB - FSB is front side bus, the interface the CPU communicates to your mobo with. QPI replaced FSB recently.
• CPU L2 Cache - L2 cache (And now L3 cache on newer CPUs) is how much data your CPU stores while calculating. The more it can store to calculate the less it has to ask for said data.

One general thing to use to understand graphics cards, and I posted some of this in a different thread, is that they come out different generations, but across all generations you can tell the relative power of the cards based on the second digit in the product number.

Please note these are GENERAL observations only, and I'm sure you'll be able to find cards that don't fit this spec (especially the recent Geforce 220/240 cards). If in doubt, compare prices of different cards: if a card is labelled 8700, but the price is about the same as a 8400, chances are it performs similarly to the 8400. The numbering scheme of late is further confused as nVidia in particular have been releasing older cards with new names when they haven't really changed much.

Cards that have a second digit of 1, 2, 3 and usually 4 will be in the low end for that generation. Eg 5200, 6400, 8250, 9300, x350, x2300, x3300. Often cards with in the 1-3 range can be onboard graphics, which are universally shit and generally worse than a similarly numbered standalone card. Avoid any cards in these ranges if you're looking for a gaming computer, but they may be good choices for HTPCs and certainly fine for general office tasks.

Often cards that have second digits of 5 are re-badged cards introduced later in the life of the series. Eg the Radeon x1550 is actually the same as a x1300 Pro done on a new process so it requires less power, but the performance is still that of a x1300 Pro despite the number change. Other times cards with a 2nd digit of 5 are genuine mid-range cards. If in doubt, compare prices and read reviews.

Cards that have second digits of 6 and sometimes 7, are considered 'mid-range' cards. Back in 2000-2004 or so midrange cards really weren't really up to snuff IMO, but in recent years mid-range cards will give you decent bang for your buck and allow you to run most games at medium-high settings on resolutions up to 22" widescreen monitors. They'll be satisfactory for 24" widescreens, but a higher spec'd card would be recommended here. Again examples of cards would be 5600, 9600, 6600, x1500

Cards that have second digits of 8 and 9 are 'high-end' cards. Generally you won't need to get one of these, unless you're looking for the very best performance, or if you're running large resolutions (including multiple monitors) and want all settings maxed out in your games.

Then there are many many suffixes that get applied to different cards, as well as sub-numbers: 9600 Pro vs 9650 Pro vs 9600XT vs 9800 LE vs 9800 vs 9800 Pro vs 9800 XT for example. It's hard to give a general guide on these as there are many different suffixes in use. In older generations "Pro" used to be the top, or 2nd highest card in a range, but now it is often the bottom or 2nd bottom card in that range. Prices act as a good guide here, but be sure to read reviews as well.

Useful sites:
Buyer's guides for different price ranges, updated every few months with latest overview of available components http://www.anandtech.com/guides/
Interactive benchmark charts that let you compare most major graphics cards to each other in a variety of benchmark software http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/graphics-cards,1.html

• CPU type - Brand of the CPU, something to identify it.
  
• CPU Speed - The generic term used to quantify the processing power of the CPU. Measured in Hz (1 Hz = 1 second^-1). Processors have two particular numbers, a clock speed and a multiplier. When overclocking, you typically increase the clock speed. For example, most AMD processors run at 200 MHz, then have a multiplier of, say, x11 to get the listed 2.2 GHz. If you increase the clock speed to 220 MHz, it will run at 2.42 GHz. I don't know the specifics of how this works.
  
• CPU FSB - Only found on Intel pre nehalem processors (the i7, i5, i3 kind). Usually it's 4xClock speed, which is 800 MHz on many processors. I don't understand it. AMD uses HyperTransport, which is usually at 2 GHz, or around there. The numbers aren't really comparable.
  
• CPU L2 Cache - A Cache is a dedicated set of memory for the CPU to use which has a ridiculously high bandwidth and used to be stored on the motherboard, but is now on the CPU. Now processors have L3 caches, which are typically much larger (6 MB rather than 512 kB).
  
• Memory - Generally reported in terms of total Memory available in GB. Windows shouldn't use more than 500 MB on Vista, and other programs which run in the background will also load into the RAM (memory).
  
• Memory Speed - RAM, much like the CPU, is based on a clock. By default, RAM is set to a ratio based on the speed of the CPU. A 1:1 ratio would be the clock speed = RAM speed (meaning most would be 200 MHz). That would equate to DDR-400 (DDR stands for double data rate, meaning the speed is doubled). The PC2-5300 stuff simply means it transfers at 5300 Mbits per second, or 667 MHz * 8 bits/byte.
  
• Graphics Card - In all cases the first number is the series, for example the 8000 series for nVidia is all based on the same g88/g92 core, and supports Direct X 10. They're generally a particular generation of graphics made by a company. The second number is its relative performance. An 8 or 9 designates the best in the series (8800 was the best in the 8000 series). Typically the third number displays some sort of hierarchy within the performance indicator. This is especially used in ATi, with their 5870, 5850, and 5830. Note that the 5830 is better than the 5770. ATi dropped their naming scheme in the HD 3000 series and opted to use the third number to display the hierarchy. nVidia still uses their naming scheme, and it generally follows GS, GT, GTS, GTX, Ultra, however not always. More of a reason to hate nVidia IMO. You can't really compare graphics cards except in their own series by the name alone. For example, a 5450 is significantly worse than the performance of a GT 220. However, a 5850 is about the same as a GTX 285.
  
• Video Memory - Needed to store frames in a buffer. The video card calculates around 3 frames ahead so that the video playback is smooth, but it has to store it in VRAM. Quick calculations can tell us how much you need:
  
  3 bytes per pixel, 1920 x 1080 pixels, Triple buffering. Multiply that together and you need 17 MB. AA further increases this dramatically, and then you need to load all the textures into the VRAM too. It's helpful if you have more video memory, but it's rather hard for a game to use more than 1 GB on max settings, and impossible without AA and/or custom huge textures to use even 512 MB. 256 is plenty if you won't be using AA/AF. You can google Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering to see what they do.
  

First of all forget Newb's post it contains only vague and some wrong information.

[*]CPU type - wut is it?
Intel Core 2 Duo - It's a multicore processor with 2 cores, so it can perform 2 tasks at the same time. For example you can extract a large rar file in the background without suffering from performance penalties when playing a game not made for dual/quad cores.

[*]Memory - does this mean the amount of memory it can handle at a given time? How does this factor in when I'm gaming?
It stores data temporary for quick usage. In games that's music sounds, models and the like. (But not textures. Those go to your graphics card's VRAM)
The most important number with RAM is its size. If you happen to run out of RAM your applications will have to rely on reading from your hard disk which is infinitely slower. 2GB is still enough for current games, but in maybe a year or 2 you'll want to have 4GB.
Any other RAM specification is not too influential on gaming. Obviously you'll want the highest DDR version (because they can be clocked higher) to achieve the highest transfer rates, but in practice RAM is fast enough most of the time so you'll only notice minuscule differences in frame rates.
[*]Memory Speed - wut? What's DDR2 667 mean?
DDR2 667 means that your RAM is capable of 667 million * 2 transfers per second. The 2 is not from DDR2 but from DDR2 (double data rate).
So nowadays you only have to check the big numbers 667, 800, 1000 etc. and make sure the RAM fits your board. DDR2 and DD3 are incompatible, also your board must have a high enough FSB to fully use your RAM speed.

[*]Graphics Card - This one confuses me because of all the numbers and diff ways of naming them... For example... GeForce 9000 vs GeForce 9600 .. which one's better? Wut do the numbers represent?
First of all there's nVidia GeForces and the ATi Radeons. Different companies, different numbering, but there's similarities:
The first digit is the generation and the 2nd number is the "power level" aka how fast the card is.
Generally speaking newer generation cards have less power consumption, and more recent features, but what really matters speed wise is the 2nd digit when you compare cards that are not too old. Keep in mind that this is only a very rough way to look at it and needs much more consideration when you actually buy a card.
ATi reached the 9000s years ago so they just swapped over and started anew with 1000s they are now 5000s.
When nVidia reached the 9000s they swapped over to a 3 digit numbering system. They just reached the 300s.
The 9600GT is still a decent card although it already starts to feel its age. If you can get a 9800 or 250 or the ATi equivalent.

[*]CPU Speed - diff between memory and graphics card?
That question makes no sense. CPU speed is what the name suggests, the speed at which your CPU runs, aka the calculations per second it can perform. Both CPU and GFX have to be good for games. If either is bad your game will run slow.

[*]Video Memory - ??
Basically the amount of textures and lighting maps your card can store. If you don't have enough of it that's no biggie, all games support lower res textures/maps.

[*]CPU FSB
[*]CPU L2 Cache
Actually FSB still is the connection from the processor to the main memory (RAM).
QPI (Intel's implementation of AMD's Hyper Transport) is a direct connection between the processing cores to synchronize the cache memory data (L1- L3 cache).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 23 2010, 10:16 am by NudeRaider. Reason: formatting

Almost, but not quite. DDR2 667 would run at about 333 MHz. DDR clock speeds are usually listed as double what they really are (though not always for graphics cards). This dates back to the transition from regular SDRAM to DDR SDRAM, which ran at the same clock speeds but could transfer twice as much data per clock cycle.


The memory bandwidth is measured in megabytes per second, not megabits per second. The numbers stated are for single channel operation - dual or triple channel modes can double or triple this, respectively, by using all of the memory modules in a channel all at the same time, probably in a method similar to how RAID 0 works for hard drives. The number of bytes transferred per clock cycle is apparently 16 (or 128 bits), because 333 MHz * 16 bytes = 5328 MB/s (333 MHz for the reason stated above). IIRC, the bus width of regular SDRAM was 64 bits. I think DDR was also 64 bits but used some method of transferring data at two different times during each clock cycle.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 23 2010, 11:40 am by ShadowFlare.

I used occam's razor when I found that 667*8=5300 . I knew it was something along those lines.

Also, RAM is based on your CPU clock, so if you overclock your CPU, you're overclocking your RAM too. You might have to drop the speed down when overclocking if your RAM isn't stable at speeds above its recommended speed.

If you want to get technical about it they share the system clock. And system clock * multiplier = CPU clock.
So if you hit your RAM limitations while overclocking the CPU you would have to raise the multiplier.
I'm not much into overclocking, so this may be wrong, but I think there's motherboards/BIOSes that let you change the multiplier.

My BIOS isn't very intuitive. If I run the RAM at 200 MHz (an actual option in BIOS), it runs at CPU/11 (I have an 11 multiplier). If I run the RAM at 400 MHz, it runs at CPU/6. Well that means it's 2200/6 = 367 MHz.

Other motherboards you can change the ratio itself, rather than specify the MHz (which isn't very accurate anyway).

Most motherboards (non-prebuilt) will allow you to change the multiplier, but generally the CPU has a max multiplier. You used to be able to mod the CPU to unlock the multiplier, but that changed when CPUs started coming with the heat spreader on them. "Extreme" edition CPUs generally have an unlocked multiplier which can go anywhere, but it probably won't be stable. I can change my multiplier from 11 down to 1 if I wanted, and the Cool & Quiet tech generally lowers the multiplier while not in use to save power.

Seems to me that pretty much everything has been covered, although I feel like the idea of HDD, RAM, and Cache needs to be clarified a bit more, so here goes nothing!

Every time you run a program, data from the file that is the program(the .exe) and possible other files(DLL's, for example) are loaded into your computer's Memory, because it's faster to do it that way, than to continually read from the hard drive, because it is slow.

So it loads it into your RAM which is much faster, because it doesn't have any moving parts, it's all electronic, and it has a closer and faster connection to the CPU, the FSB(front side bus), and then when your CPU needs some information, rather than having to request it from the slow-moving hard drive, it gets it out of your RAM. However, your RAM is still typically not fast enough to keep up with your CPU, so the sections of data in the RAM that are used the most get taken out and put in the Cache.

The Cache is even faster than RAM, because it is actually on the chip with the CPU itself, not in a separate area. The Cache is the reason why you would want to buy a Xeon over a Celeron(the higher and lower end of the Intel CPU spectrum, respectively), even if both run at the same speed in Ghz, because no matter how fast your CPU is, it eventually ends up waiting on your RAM, Cache, hard drive, or other components to give it the data it needs to process. You could have an infinitely fast CPU in a computer, with no cache, and it would only be able to run about as fast as your RAM, because it would process everything it can, and then it would end up waiting on your RAM to send it more data to use in processing.

The Xeon processors have a much larger cache, specifically the L2 Cache(level 2 cache, there are level 1 caches, and sometimes L3s) than the Celeron, and so even though the Celeron may be faster, the Xeon will beat it in the end because it can simply access the data quicker. Especially for gaming, it's important to have plenty of Cache on your CPU, so the functions that are used excessively can be put there, rather than on the relatively slow RAM. Having lots of RAM is only good until you have enough to load everything that the game will use at once, after that it's simply a waste, so having huge amounts of RAM is only good if you are going to have several programs running at once, all of which needing to store a lot of data into RAM. For gaming you need the faster Cache in order to run at the processor's level.

What is comes down to is eliminating bottlenecks, that's pretty much how it always works when you're trying to upgrade a computer, you find what is the section of the computer that is causing the rest of the computer to wait on it to catch up so they can continue, and you replace it with something that can keep up with the others.