CPU Specs Explained (2020) [The Ultimate Guide]

[Music] the first thing you'll learn about the CPU when building a gaming rig is that it's the brains of every PC and second only to the GPU in terms of the overall impact on gameplay performance so it should be obvious that the CPU is not a piece of hardware that you can afford to skim on however the CPU may very well be one of the most daunting and convoluted pieces of gaming hardware for novice builders to shop for after all there's so many different specs that all sound important and if you mess some of them up you may not even be able to properly piece the PC together with that in mind we've decided to dedicate this video to the CPU spec sheet cache core accounts clock speeds and overall compatibility we'll be covering it all we won't be covering the specs in depth since the video will already be longer than it usually is just due to the number of specs we have to cover and the sheer complexity of the piece of hardware but we will emphasize which specs are important for gaming and which ones you can basically ignore just as we did in the RAM specs video that's right no longer will you need to abandon the dream of building your own custom PC in favor of picking up a pre-built one just because the CPU spec sheet is giving you a headache so without any further ado let's begin the first thing you'll generally need to decide on when picking a CPU is the brand the mainstream desktop CPU market is currently dominated by two giants AMD and Intel Intel has been the go-to premium option for well over a decade now up until recently their unique blend of advanced features and overall high performance has made them the most appealing option for all with the most budget solutions meanwhile AMD cpus had a reputation for being a more budget-friendly option with higher core counts and a good rot performance but they could never really stand up to Intel when he came to more serious processing solutions that all changed however with the release of the rise on line of CPUs back in 2017 these CPUs didn't only make AMD compile they even managed to overshadow Intel due to their unprecedented price to performance ratio fast-forward to 2019 and the release of their third generation of rice and CPUs and AMD is now generally regarded as the better option for both budget and mid-range gaming rigs and even those who disagree with the statement can't deny that the playing field is at the very least much more even now so if you're building a mid-range gaming PC both Intel and AMD CPUs are viable options but which CPU should you choose both AMD and Intel have several series of CPUs which differ in terms of intended use for example AMD has the rise in CPUs which are aimed towards gamers the Athlon and a series CPUs which are intended for simple home and office use and the thread wrappers which are generally used for workstations and servers the Intel CPU series can also be divided into these three rough categories with the Pentium and Celeron CPUs at the bottom of the barrel the Intel Core series made for gaming and the Intel Xeon CPUs topping off the list now it's obvious that you shouldn't use the simple home and office used CPUs if you're building a gaming rig and want the best performance but what might not seem as obvious is that you shouldn't use the CPU is intended for workstations and servers if you're just interested in gaming either yes they're more expensive but the gameplay performance margin between the two you will not reflect this huge price discrepancy and the least so if you're building a gaming PC it's best to stick to the gaming line of CPUs this means Rison if you're on Team red and the core series if you're on Team Blue both of these CPU series use the same numbers to indicate the quality and power of their models starting with the number three for the budget options as in AMD Verizon three and Intel Core i3 and then buffing this number to five seven and nine interesting fact the numbers 3 5 7 & 9 are used instead of 1 2 3 & 4 just because they sound more impressive and we can't argue at this Rison 530 600 X sure has a better ring to it than rising 3,600 X would what's more at the letter I used an Intel CPUs doesn't really mean anything they just figured I three I five and I seven would sound cooler or more impressive than the numbers on their own would but that's enough trivia for now let's instead turn our attention towards some of the more important questions like which of these numbers represents the best price to performance ratio the Verizon three and I three CPUs are generally affordable solutions great for gamers on a budget they're undeniably the weakest of the bunch but they're still gaming CPUs that offer more than the likes of Athlon or Celeron CPUs ever could the risin 5 and i-5 CPUs are more powerful mid-range solutions that are great for gaming and can hold our own with some professional software as well we should also note that mid-range CPUs generally have no problem getting the most out of many high-end CPUs so this is the performance range we recommend for most users horizon 7 and i7 CPUs are really only necessary if you're planning on running CPU heavy programs these CPUs are an overkill for most gaming PC's but they feel right at home in the most high-end builds as for the rising 9 + i9 CPUs just forget about them you really don't need them these are workstation CPUs and you won't really benefit from having them over a rise in 7 or an i7 unless you're building the most hardcore multi-gpu vr gaming PC ever so now that you've decided on a manufacturer and product line it's time to turn your attention to the motherboard compatibility and this always starts with the socket type so what's a socket we'll in simple terms the socket is the interface that the CPU uses to connect to the motherboard different sockets have different pen configurations and can even differ in size so you need to make sure that your motherboard and CPU are compatible otherwise you won't really be able to physically fit the CPU onto the motherboard at the time of this video's release all rise in CPUs use the same a.m. for socket ask for until core CPU sockets the main one still the LG a one one five one socket however this socket has recently been revised so it does suffer from some compatibility issues this means that you should always double check whether your Intel motherboard will be compatible with your Intel CPU luckily you have the power of the Internet at your disposal so you shouldn't have any problems checking for a compatibility the important thing is being aware that you need to check for this in the first place aside from this all you need to know is that the socket doesn't affect performance in any way it's just a matter of compatibility so while you do need to make sure that everything is compatible you don't need to pay any more heat to the socket type after that the second motherboard related spec you need to take into consideration is the motherboard chipset as we've mentioned the CPU interfaces with the motherboard via the socket but it uses the chipset to communicate with the other components in essence the chipset is a system of circuits that connects all the different parts of the motherboard and determines which features are and aren't available for example the number of USB ports RAM slots SATA connectors and PCI Express slots is all dictated by the chipset and the same goes for the extra features just by looking at the chipset you could ascertain whether the motherboard supports CPU overclocking multi-gpu setups Intel obtain AMD store m.i and so on so if you've got great expectations for your custom PC and pockets deep enough to realize those expectations then you should carefully consider what chipset offers the best and most relevant features for you however if you don't care about these things then you don't need to care about the chipset at all aside from maybe getting one that supports overclocking for that extra bit of performance and now we come to the juicy part the core count is easily the one spec the manufacturers like to flaunt around the most when advertising their CPUs but what exactly two cores do and how exactly do they impact gameplay performance in multiples in essence a core is a processor back when CPUs had only one cord this was basically all they had so you can think of multi-core processors is basically being several processors packed into one guy and the more course you have the better your PC will be at multitasking see the interesting thing about single core processors is that they were only able to do one thing at a time the way they gave off the illusion of multitasking was by switching between tasks very quickly but does having more cores translate to better in-game performance well kind of at least to a certain extent single core performance is still paramount when it comes to running video games but developers are definitely doing everything in their power to take advantage of multiple CPU cores that every gamer is expected to have at this point as things stand hexa core processors have shown themselves to be the most optimal choice in terms of both price and performance quad-core CPUs can still run most if not all games but depending on the type of game you're playing they can end up hampering the performance quite significantly on the other hand octa-core CPUs don't really improve the gameplay experience all that much compared to hexa core CPUs if you're building a high-end PC then they're great but otherwise you won't regret opting for a hexa core CPU like one of the many great rise and 5s or i-5 out there also we can't really talk about CPU cores without mentioning threads hyper threading and multi threading are the respective technologies that Intel and AMD use to allow a single physical core to function as two logical cores if a spec sheet shows that the CPU has say 16/12/2014 by allowing each core to tackle to toss simultaneously however threats aren't all that important for gaming like we've said developers are constantly finding new and better ways to optimize games by using multiple cores but single core performance is so more important than multitasking as far as gaming is concerned having access to more cores either physical or logical is never really a bad thing but it just doesn't Trump single core performance for example and pairing with an RT X 2080 the risin 9 3900 X CPU which has 12 cores and 24 threads performs either on par with or worse than the i7 9700 K CPU with 8 cores and no hyper threading whatsoever and the i7 is almost $200 cheaper so yes cores and threads are great but if all you're interested in is gaming then you don't need anything larger than a hexa core or octa-core CPU since not only will they be more expensive but they may not bring any gameplay benefits whatsoever the clock speed is a spec that shows you how many instructions the CPU can process clock speeds are measured in hertz where one hertz corresponds to one cycle per second so if a cpu has a clock speed of four gigahertz that means it can handle four billion instructions per second pretty crazy right this means that raising the clock speed automatically entails better performance any program can benefit from overclocking which is why it's so popular with gamers when looking at a spec sheet for any CPU you'll see two numbers related to it the base frequency at which the CPU operates out of the box and the maximum frequency that the CPU can achieve through overclocking keep in mind however that you'll need a fairly powerful cooling solution if you want to take the clock speed to the max also not all CPUs can be overclocked and not all motherboards support this feature if you want to get any overclocking done you'll need both a CPU that can handle this and a motherboard with a chipset that allows this all AMD cpus are unlocked meaning that they can be overclocked at your leisure but as for Intel CPUs only the models ending in a hey are eligible for overclocking Intel CPUs generally have a higher maximum frequency however which is why overclocking aficionados tend to gravitate towards them on the other hand AMD CPUs tend to have the benefit of coming with better stock coolers so if you aren't looking to do any overclocking or just want to overclock your cpu a bit they're by far the most cost-effective choice nevertheless and we cannot emphasize this enough it's important to remember that clock speed is not the only spec that determines the overall performance there are many other variables here that affect this like CPU architecture and core count some are even beyond your control is a consumer such as the optimization of any given game some games simply favor a certain CPU architecture and there's nothing you can do about it so while having a high clock speed is never a bad thing it's not all there is to a CPU now if there's one spec that tends to give new builders a headache its cache why well in our experience they give more attention to it than they should so how much attention should be given to the cache then if gaming is all you're concerned about we would have to go with none whatsoever let's elaborate on this a CPU cache is a high-speed memory cache assigned to the CPU to make future retrieval of data and instruction faster it works a lot like RAM and that it functions as a means of high-speed temporary storage but since it's integrated into the CPU itself it's even faster this sounds great and all but it's only really important for multitasking so while more is better you can comfortably put cache at the bottom of the list of priorities when shopping for a gaming CPU or even ignore it entirely moving on we have TPD or thermal power design this spec indicates how much power processor needs in order to function properly it's useful for determining what kind of wattage you'll need for power supply to get your custom PC up and running we highly suggest watching our video on how to choose a power supply if you're new to this since it isn't as simple as just adding up the TPD of all hardware pieces and peripherals but we won't get into the finer details here since the video is already running pretty long the link is in the description if you're interested the TPD is also helpful because it tells you what temperature you can expect the CPU to be at when running normal software do you know however that this doesn't indicate what the maximum temperature it can generate is nor what the maximum power draw is overall it's not a priority spec but it's handy for figuring out how power efficient the CPU is and how hot you should expect it to run and lastly we have integrated graphics integrated graphics our graphics processing units that are integrated into the CPU allowing the PC to operate and even run games without the need for a dedicated graphics card they don't come near to the performance of dedicated graphics cards but if you're pinching for pennies they're definitely a serviceable alternative pretty much all Intel CPUs feature integrated graphics of some kind unless otherwise marked basically only the models that end in an F don't have integrated graphics on the AMD side of things the situation is a bit different first of all AMD doesn't use the term integrated graphics instead they have their AP use these are technically different but they function the same we're just pointing this out so that you know what to look for as far as gameplay performance is concerned AMD APU blow integrated graphics out of the park and this isn't a hyperbole you can expect AMD apus to achieve anywhere between fifty and a hundred percent higher frame rates than the Intel CPUs with integrated graphics that is a significant framerate boost especially at this level of performance where even a gap of ten frames can make the difference between playable and choppy also we know some novice builders like the extra security that the CPUs with integrated graphics provide but you shouldn't place too big of an emphasis on this sure if the GPU dies on you and you've got integrated graphics you now aren't stuck with a non functioning PC but AMD APU s have to make some concessions in terms of processing power to accommodate the graphics unit we've already said that the Rison 5 CPUs have 6 cores and 12 threads five AP use only have four cores and eight threats so you would essentially be downgrading your CPU by quite a bit just to make sure that you can get a bit of extra mileage out of your PC should the GPU malfunction overall we don't think that this is a good trade and that about does it for this video this is everything you need to know about the specs of a CPU in a nutshell we have separate videos where we talk about just certain aspects of the CPU in more detail but this should be more than enough if all you're looking for is to decide on which CPU is the best for you to recap you first need to decide on whether you're getting an Intel or an AMD CPU and then you need to make sure that it's compatible with your motherboard the socket is the key part the chipset is just important if you're looking for some extra features or overclocking support the specs that influence gameplay performance the most are the core count and the clock speed in both cases more is better but keep in mind that there are also some diminishing returns with core counts after getting past the magic number eight the TDP shouldn't play any part in dictating your choice of CPU but it is important to reflect on it after the fact so that you can get a sufficiently powerful PSU ask for the cache more is ostensibly better but it doesn't do much when it comes to gaming additionally if you're looking to make full use of integrated graphics then a good AMD APU should be your first priority preferably a Rison APU so long as you keep these few pointers in mind we're confident that you'll have no trouble picking out the best CPU for your needs it's been a longer video than usual but the CPU is a more complex piece of hardware than most so there was really no way of getting around this in any case we hope you found this video helpful if you have you can help us out by liking it and subscribing to our Channel and if you've got friends who could benefit from watching this video help them out by sharing it either directly or on social media also if you want to see more videos like this one click on the bell icon so that YouTube doesn't accidentally sneak them past you we upload new videos regularly so the next one should be right around the corner in the meantime may your games be fun and your losses view and as always we'll see you next time on gaming scam

Channel: GamingScan

Views: 356,191

Keywords: gaming, what is cpu cache, what do cpu specs mean, cpu specs explained, understanding cpu specs, CPU specs, cpu, guide, pc, amd ryzen, ryzen, techsetupgear, jdtg, what is cpu speed, what is cpu clock speed, what are cpu threads, amd vs intel, how to choose a cpu, how to choose a good cpu, understanding cpu cache, what is cpu tdp, ryzen vs intel, cpu specifications, processor specs, gaming cpu, gaming processor, hwo to choose cpu

Id: xJNkEzy3-O4

Length: 18min 53sec (1133 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 10 2019