IMPORTANCE OF CPU SPEED OR PROCESSOR SPEED AND MEMORY

 Introduction

A very common question is, which is more important, the processor speed or the amount memory. This is a difficult question to answer, so we have to understand what each component does and how they relate to each other. This information will strive to teach you the basic tasks of memory and the CPU

Central Processing Unit (CPU)

It is called the brain of the computer, whose job is to take information from the various input devices, like the OS, software and execute them. A CPU executes a certain amount of instructions within a grouping called a cycle. The speed of the CPU is measured in how many cycles it can perform in a given second. A speed of one cycle per second is called a hertz. This is illustrated in the table below:

Hertz Term	Cycles Per Second
1 Hertz	1
1 Megahertz	1,000,000
800 Megagertz	800,000,000
1 Gigahertz	1,000,000,000

So it is better to have a very high Speed CPU, as more instructions get executed in one second. In early days normal speed of a CPU is about 2 GHz, which has been increased today. Computers of at 2Ghz should be more than fine these days for most applications and you will probably not see much of a difference by increasing the speed of your processor when using standard applications. Games on the other hand can be more CPU intensive, and if you are going to be using your computer predominantly as a gaming machine, then it could not hurt to spend a few extra dollars on the CPU. You must remember though, to save some money for your memory, as that is just as important to having a fast machine.

Computer Memory

As we have seen the importance of the CPU speed, the amount of memory is also important in your computer. Memory is the temporary storage place for your computers information. When a computer is processing information it is placed in the memory to be recovered or processed later. If all your available memory is used, the computer will then start storing temporary data on to your hard drive, which is called as swap file. When the CPU gets free it will then read it back from your swap file and place it into memory where it can be used.

While using swap file, it becomes two-step process in retrieving that data from the hard drive and then stored in the memory, instead of a one step process of reading the data directly from memory. Even more important is that reading data from memory is many times faster than reading that same data off the hard drive. With this in mind, you can see how it is important to have as much memory as you can, so that the swap file on your hard drive is never used, and all data is stored and read directly from your memory.