...just introducing myself on the NW Computer blog. I'm the technical service adviser and receptionist here at the retail location and if your computer is getting worked on and you want to get an update, odds are you'll wind up talking to me. I'm going to use the blog as a forum to talk about the basics of understanding your computer so bear with me here folks, it's all so new and shiny. We'll start today with the three components that most dramatically affect your performance.
First off is the motherboard. This is what everything in your computer lives on. Some of them, most modern ones to be honest, come with on-board graphics so in that case it would also be the part that provides your display. There are some benefits and drawbacks to a motherboard with on-board graphics so it's kind of a double edged sword. A system with on-board graphics is often a cheaper and easier way to go, however if the graphics component fails the whole motherboard will need to be replaced. If you're on a budget and you don't see yourself doing much gaming though, a motherboard with on-board graphics is probably your best bet.
Next up I'll talk a bit about your computer's processor. This is the portion of the computer that does the brunt of your heavy lifting as far as tasking is done. The modern processor's efficiency is measured in gigahertz which means, literally, "millions of operations per second". This part gets a little confusing because each process in your computer is actually executed by a massive number of micro processes. It used to be that efficiency was only measured by a single number but more and more frequently now processors are relying on multiple cores which make one processor appear to be more than one. These processors are much more energy efficient and if the cores are working in tandem are far more effective than their single core brethren.
Finally I'll discuss your system RAM. Ram stands for Random Access Memory. What RAM does for your computer is basically offloads processes from the hard drive temporarily, which I'll discuss in next week's post, so that they may be accessed by your processor more efficiently. What this means is that if you access your word processor an awful lot that it will be stored in your RAM so that it will load up quicker. RAM is also helpful in a number of tasks ranging from simply burning a CD to compiling family videos. If you're going to play games on your system, as many of you will, don't hesitate to put two or more gigabytes of RAM in your machine. However if your machine will be used to surf the web, check your emails and
occasionally post a blog a gigabyte of ram will probably suffice.
Hope you found this informative and next week I'll be discussing hard drives and other storage devices.
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