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Lesson 3: CPU and system performance
3
Unit 1 - Lesson 3: CPU and system performance
The GPU
Task
Shared:\Computing - ICT\KS4 - Computer Science GCSE (9-1)\Unit 1\Lesson 3
Graphics processing unit
Specialist Hardware designed to handle graphics and image processing
more, but less powerful cores when compared to cpu
computers have basic built in GPU's on motherboard/cpu
dedicated graphics cards for high end gaming pc's
- expensive
- large
- noisy
Clock speed
Cores
Over clocking
Each core can process data indepedently
More cores = more instructions processed at once
Most devices now have a minimum of four cores
It is possioble to modify the settings of a CPU to force the clock to run faster than normal.
Known as over clocking
Each 'tick' generates heat, and working a CPU too hard can cause permanent damage
High performance water cooling can help
The number of instructions the CPU can carry put per second (Hz)
- MHz
- GHz
The higher the clock speed, the better the performance.
System performance
Lot's of things can have an effect upon system performance
The biggest factors are normally hardware related
Today we will look at how the CPU, RAM and GPU can affect the speed of our computer.
Doubling the cores will not double performance - software needs to be written to be executed on multi-core CPU's
not all tasks can be split evenly - it may be that the one core may need to pause to wait for the result from another core
RAM
Lesson Objectives
To understand the effect of CPU specification on the performance of a computer
To understand the relationship between RAM and processing speed
To understand the role of the GPU
A computer with too little ram will rely upon the use of virtual memory
more ram = more applications/more intensive applications will run smoothly
easily upgradable
increasing ram will not necessarily improve performance if enough is installed to begin with!
Starter
How's your memory?
Cache
The cache is storage inside the CPU
much faster to access than ram
holds frequently used or about to be used data
larger cache = better performance
CPU performance
CPU's with higher clock speeds, more cores and larger caches will be faster
All of these things will normally make the cpu more expensive!