In todays consumer world, there are two main comapny choices for Processors: Intel and AMD. Other comanies, like IBM and VIA (Cyrix used to) do offer decent solutions, as fo Motorola.

In Practice, Intel has relied on Clock Speed, the Netburst architecture, a long execution pipeline, and Branch Prediction to give the Pentium 4 Line of Processors it's speed. It's top stable speed is 3.8GHz, with attempts to push it to 4GHz using stock cooling proving unsuccessful. Other enthusiasts have achieved this using higher-grade cooling solutions.

AMD, on the other hand, uses a more efficient Execution Pipeline, that performs 50% per clock cycle better than Intel's. Their Flagship Processor is the AMD Athlon FX-57, capable of running at 2.6GHz, and performs better than a 4GHz clocked Pentium 4.

Now, what processor you use is largely dependant on what you want the PC to do.

Contents 1 Computing Roles 1.1 Server 1.2 Games Machine 1.3 Multimedia 1.4 Mobile Solutions 1.5 Budget PC 1.6 Workstation

Computing RolesEdit

ServerEdit

If you're looking to build a server, you have a variety of old, and new processing solutions.

• Intel's Xeon
• AMD's Opteron

Those two are the high-grade chips, but the best part about them is the ability to work in a Motherboard with more than one CPU Socket, using SMP.

Games MachineEdit

AMD has consistently shown itself as Top Dog in the Games arena, with it's FX-55. However, Intel's Pentium 4 is not far behind.. and even the Pentium M is showing promise.

MultimediaEdit

For Video Editing, Playback, Audio Conversion, and Photo Manipulation, the Pentium 4's Prescott Core really takes a leap forwards, it's large 31-stage pipeline proving a big boost.

Mobile SolutionsEdit

Tried and Tested, the Pentium M comes out on top, but competition from AMD's Turion 64 line of notebook processors remains to be seen. Both the Celeron and the Pentium 4 are also available in Mobile Processor forms, namely the Celeron M and the Pentium 4-M.

Budget PCEdit

If your system is a Budget PC, there are processors to suit this line, as well. Intel's Celeron is perhaps the best known budget Processor, followed by AMD's Semperon (That followed the Ahtlon XP and Duron processors). The Celeron itself has evolved between using the Pentium II, Pentium III and Pentium 4 Core Architecture.

WorkstationEdit