Explaining Intel & AMD CPUs

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers this time i'm going to give you an overview of current intel and amd central processing units or cpus otherwise known as microprocessors on the intel side the range starts with our latest 2021 atom chips followed by the more powerful celeron and pentium families next we get to intel's core range which includes a core m3 core i3 core i5 core i7 core i9 and core x series cpus lastly we have the xeon chips that intel sells for servers and other mission critical computing applications on the amd side the range starts with our lower end athlon chips after which we get to their more powerful ryzen family with its ryzen 3 ryzen 5 ryzen 7 and ryzen 9 members next and even more powerful are the ryzen threadripper chips and finally things are topped off with the athlon pro ryzen pro and epic families aimed at the workstation and server market as you can see the range of intel and amd micro processors is pretty complicated and each chip listed is available in lots of different models so let's now dive in to look at things in more depth and to do so we first need to consider some key aspects of a cpus specification key cpu specifications include clock speed core count multi-threading and cache clock speed is measured in gigahertz and the higher the value the more instructions a cpu can execute per second today most cpus have both a base clock speed as well as a turbo or boost frequency which they can operate out if they remain within safe temperature and power limits core count indicates how many individual processing units a cpu contains and hence how many tasks or threads it can execute at the same time so the more cores a processor has the higher its potential performance parallel processing is enhanced further if the cpu supports multi-threading which uses virtualization to allow each single core to run more than one thread at the same time intel's multi-threading technology is called hyper threading whilst amd's is known as simultaneous multi-threading or smt usually multi-threading doubles the thread count so that for example a quad-core processor can execute eight threads simultaneously however processors with four-way multi-threading have been produced to allow each core to run four threads at the same time cache is a type of very fast ram built into a cpu and improves its performance by reducing the requirement to transfer data into and out of standard ram so the more cache a processor has the better it will perform cpu cache also comes in three categories known as level one level two and level three with level one being the fastest but also the most expensive modern cpus come with some level one cache plus larger quantities of level two and level three however many cpu listings only indicate a single cache value and to keep things simple i'm going to take this approach here cache really needs a whole explaining computer's video to itself with some terms defined let's now turn to intel's cpu range this starts with its atom family which consists of low energy chips manufactured for tablets and smartphones as well as for iot edge computing and micro servers most atom chips are embedded on a motherboard rather than fitted in a socket and hence are not available for individual system builders most atom chips are also not that powerful however the atom p5962b which is designed for use in network base stations does have 24 cores and an impressive 27 megabytes of cash next we have intel celeron and pentium processor families which are intended for use in lower cost desktop and laptop computers recent pentium models are either silver which are optimized for cost or gold which optimized for performance current celeron processors have base clock speeds of up to 3.5 gigahertz up to four cores no hyper threading and no more than a minimal four megabytes of cache meanwhile current pentium processors have base clock speeds up to 4.2 gigahertz up to four cores hyper threading on some models and a cache of up to six megabytes moving on we get to intel's core range which includes their core m3 core i3 core i5 core i7 core i9 and corex series here the core m3 chips are designed for mobile devices but need to be lightweight with a good battery life next the core i3 i5 i7 and i9 chips are mainstream desktop and laptop processors with increasing levels of performance finally the core x series delivers the highest performance with its extreme version i7 and i9 chips as we can see the maximum number of cores base clock and cash increases across the core family and it should be noted that intel's hyper threading technology is now available in all core ranges apart from core ms3 finally we have intel xeon cpus which are intended for servers and high-end workstations these come in a number of families including xeon e for entry level servers and xeon w for workstations there are then four different kinds of scalable xeon cpu called xeon platinum gold silver and bronze all of which allow systems to be built with more than one processor at the time of making this video the most powerful xeon chip is the platinum 9282 which has 56 cores a 2.6 gigahertz base frequency a turbo speed of 3.8 gigahertz and 77 megabytes of cash and remember this scalable processor is intended for use in a multi-cpu system in the last few years the dominance of intel and the microprocessor marketplace has been challenged by amd or advanced micro devices today amd's lower end chips are members of its athlon family with silver and gold models available in direct competition to intel silver and gold pentium chips athlon based clock speeds were up to 3.5 gigahertz with up to four cores and six megabytes of cash in competition to intel's core family we next have amd's ryzen 3 5 7 and 9 microprocessors all of these feature amd's smt multi-threading technology and as we can see have very impressive core counts and cache in the higher end processors if we add in amd's ryzen threadripper family the specifications get very impressive indeed with the top of the range threadripper 3990x having 64 cores a base clock frequency of 2.9 gigahertz and a combined 292 megabytes of cash next in the amd lineup we find the athlon pro and ryzen pro for business workstations these have very similar specifications to their consumer counterparts but offer a higher production quality with longer warranties and improved security finally amd sells its epic family of server cpus which are scalable like intel's competitors xeon chips with the top of the range epic 7 h1 2 boasting 64 cores a 2.6 gigahertz base clock boosting to 3.3 gigahertz and a combined 292 megabytes of cash so far in this video i've mainly been discussing process of families within which by many different processor models each of these individual cpus also has its own name which looks something like this both intel and amd use pretty similar conventions with their cpu names starting with a brand such as intel core or amd ryzen followed by a brand modifier such as i7 next comes the number of the processors generation followed by some sku or stock keeping unit digits lastly there is a product line suffix which provides important information about a processor's capabilities for example a g suffix appears if a cpu has integrated graphics or in the case of intel processors and f is used to indicate a chip that can only be used with a separate graphics card as we can see in our example an intel g suffix may also be followed by a number in the range 1 to 7 to indicate graphics capabilities other suffix letters include k which for an intel cpu indicates that a processor's frequency is unlocked so it can be overclocked t which indicates a low power consumption chip h which indicates a high performance mobile chip u for a power efficient mobile chip and y for an extremely low power mobile chip neither intel or amd use an entirely consistent name and number system across their entire range with for example intel pentium cpus not having suffix letters this said for processes that do carry them it's really important to stress that only intel processors without an f suffix and only amd processors with a g suffix have on board graphics today this includes most consumer intel cpus but by no means all amd chips amd indeed market their processors as either cpus or apus with apu standing for accelerated processing unit and describing a microprocessor that includes both the cpu and the gpu i cannot stress strongly enough that most desktop ryzen processors are cpus and not apus this means that if you purchase a ryzen chip without a g suffix and plug it into a motherboard you will not get a video signal on its monitor connections this is something i get an increasing number of messages about so please be careful to choose a g suffix ryzen processor if you're not fitting a separate graphics card in your computer the only part of a microprocessor specification i've not mentioned so far is the price which inevitably rises as power and performance increase as i make this video in the spring of 2021 microprocessor prices are also rather high and this is due to supply shortages which began in 2020 as the demand the computer hardware rose this means that right now it remains difficult to buy exactly the microprocessor you want let alone at a reasonable price and i would imagine high microprocessor prices are going to continue for at least the rest of 2021 but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed what you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and i hope to talk to you again very [Music] recent you

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 85,345

Rating: 4.9640198 out of 5

Keywords: Explaining CPUs, CPUs explained, microprocessors explained, Intel CPU range, AMD CPU range, Intel microprocessors, AMD microprocessors, Intel range, AMD range, Intel Core, Intel Xeon, AMD Ryzen, Ryzen Threadripper, AMD EPYC, server CPUs, server microprocessors, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt

Id: QcxNdXnahOM

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 04 2021