Buy Laptops

3. Laptop Processor

Laptop PCs used to lag behind their desktop counterparts when it came to performance, but in recent years this situation is no longer true.

Laptop manufacturers and chip designers have now created small and light components that match desktop PCs in all respects. We used to think just in the number of GHz when talking about PC speed, a 1GHz PC would be slower than a 1.66GHz PC, which in turn would be slower than a 2GHz PC.

With the development of 'Dual Core' and 'Quad Core' technology processors, looking at numbers alone to gauge the Laptop PCs speed is no longer enough, a 1.66GHz 'Dual Core' laptop would, for example, offer faster performance in real world use than a old style 'single core' 2GHz machine.

Currently, if you buy a laptop with any 'Dual Core' or 'Quad Core' processor you should find the performance highly satisfactory, and as ever the higher the GHz number you can afford the faster your laptop will be.

Scream if you wanna go faster

The processor is the heart of your laptop, and just like your own heart the faster it beats, the more blood (or information) can pass through it. How fast the processor beats is a product of its clock speed, and clock speed is what is referred to when you see things like 1.66GHz or 2.2GHz in a laptop specification list.

So when it comes to processors, bigger GHz numbers are good, bigger numbers mean more information is passed though the processor in any given length of time. Minimum modern processor speeds are around 1.5GHz, and the limit is somewhere around 4GHz.

When it comes to processor performance, there is an additional factor to consider, and that is the number of 'cores' the processor in your laptop has.

Again, using your own heart as an example, imagine if you had two hearts instead of one, your hearts combined could shift twice as much blood through them compared to your single heart. So, whilst you still have only one body, you have two hearts, and can process twice as much blood.

A 'Dual Core' processor works in exactly the same way as your 'two heart' body, it is still only one processor, but it has two hearts, and can therefore process double the information. Similarly, a 'Quad Core' processor has four hearts, and as you'd expect it can process four times as much information as a 'Single Core' processor.

So when looking at the processor your laptop will have, you need to look for 'cores' and 'GHz', and in both cases, the higher then number of each, the faster your laptop will be.

Conclusion

Most laptops on the market offer a minimum of 1.5GHz and 'Dual Core' technology, and in most cases this level of performance is adequate. If you consider yourself a 'power' user, maybe you play games or process large graphic files, then something faster would be better suited, maybe a 2.2GHz 'Dual Core' or similar.

At the time of writing, 'Quad Core' processors are just beginning to break into the market, and if your budget can stretch to it these offer fantastic performance and guarantee your laptop will pump more blood then you would ever have a need for!