What do each of the parts in the computer do?
CPU or Processor:
There are 2 Brands to choose from, AMD or Intel
CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. The CPU does exactly what it stands for. It is the control unit that processes all* of the instructions for the computer.
Consider it to be the "brain" of the computer. It does all the thinking. So, would you like to have a fast or slow brain? Obviously, the answer to this question makes
the CPU the most important part of the computer. The speed here is the most significant. The processor's (CPU's) speed is rated in MHz or GHz.
Tip: 3 GHz is about 3,000 MHz.
Motherboard:
The Motherboard is the main curcuit board in the computer. It has many slots or plugins to connect together all the video cards, memory, hard drives, CD drives, etc.
The CPU is also connected onto the motherboard with a specific socket.
Memory:
All programs, instructions, and data must be stored in system memory before the computer can use it. It will hold recently used programs, instructions, and data
in memory if there is room. This provides quick access (much faster than hard drives) to information. The more memory you have, the more information you will
have fast access to and the better your computer will perform. Memory also hase different speeds that are rated in MHz. ie (800MHz) and (1033MHz)
Hard Drive:
The hard drive stores all the data on your computer - your text documents, pictures, programs, etc. The hard drive has round discs that store
information as 1s and 0s very densely packed around the discs.
Depending on how much information you need stored think about it like this:
Average file size: 4MB per Song, 4GB per Movie, 6GB per Game.
Pictures depend on the sizeand quality, usually no more than 2MB
So a 500 GB Hard Drive will hold about:
Songs: 125,000 songs
Movies: 125 movies
Games: 83 games*
Hard Drives are usually rated in GB and now the TB.
1000MB = 1GB
1000GB = 1TB
CD/DVD/BLU-Ray Drives:
CD-ROM drives are necessary today for most programs. A single CD can store up to 700 MB of data
DVD-ROM drives can store up to 8 GB of data or about 10 times the size of a regular CD
Blu-Ray drives are mainly for high defenition movies but with Blu-Ray writer you can get discs that will hold up to 50GB Over 5 times the size of a DVD
Most Drives are combo drives that do all funtions and only read the discs, others can also write on blank disks.
Video Cards:
Video cards provide the means for the computer to "talk" to your monitor so it can display what the computer is doing. Video cards have their own
CPU that make all kinds of calcuations to make scenes look more realistic. They also have their own Memory that calculates the amount of information
it can process at a time. The more memory the better the performance games will have.
Now video cards can use SLI which links multiple video cards together for incredible video performance.
AGEIA PhysX Card:
The AGEIA PhysX processor, brings awesome new power to the PC as a gaming platform. The AGEIA PhysX processor works in concert with the CPU and graphics card,
balancing the PC’s computing power between gameplay, graphics and physics. The result is unprecedented levels of action, strategy and visuals in next-generation games.
It has built in 128mb of memory onboard and connects to the motherboard using a PCI slot.