Can someone please explain how the specifications in PC’s/laptops work and what they mean?

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Im trying to build a gaming pc, but no matter how many videos i check from LinusTech or Jayztwocents etc… i can’t seem to keep up or understand correctly. So here are things i can’t understand.

– How can i easily check and compare processors and how good they are? Is a I7 8750H 2.20GHz 8th generation and thus automatically worse than a 9th or 10th generation? Do i have to look at the GHz’s?

– In what way does a laptop differ from a pc? I know a 3070 for a laptop isn’t as strong as a 3070 for pc, but is the same thing true for processors? And how do i know how big that difference is, without looking up reviews and comparisons?

– What exactly does the amount of cores change in a laptop? If i want to use my laptop to stream, do i look at the cores, the ram or am i automatically good with a 9th gen and up?

I actually have a lot more questions, but if i can get these answered, id already be happy.

Thanks in advance

In: Technology

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

You want benchmarks, side-by-side comparisons between components on a standardized workload. This will allow you to find which combination is optimal, because making a part better only improves your overall if that part is the rate limiting part. One such site is [UBMark](https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCBuilder ) and another is [Tom’s](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html ).

* better link for [Tom’s](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html )

Anonymous 0 Comments

> How can i easily check and compare processors and how good they are? Is a I7 8750H 2.20GHz 8th generation and thus automatically worse than a 9th or 10th generation? Do i have to look at the GHz’s?

The newer the generation, the better overall it will be.

Ghz is the speed the processor operates at. The higher the number the faster it is.

The more cores the more tasks the CPU can do at once, which make it more efficient.

Lower CPU speeds in the same generation means it will be cheaper and more power efficient (more battery life)

Getting an old model processor can be great when shopping for a laptop because it brings the cost way down, and the average user won’t really notice. (Avg meaning you go online, go on Facebook, look at Netflix, use MS Office Apps, and check your email)

> In what way does a laptop differ from a pc? I know a 3070 for a laptop isn’t as strong as a 3070 for pc, but is the same thing true for processors? And how do i know how big that difference is, without looking up reviews and comparisons?

Desktop CPUs and components have better performance overall. Laptop parts are optimized to be smaller, produce less heat, and use less power.

> What exactly does the amount of cores change in a laptop? If i want to use my laptop to stream, do i look at the cores, the ram or am i automatically good with a 9th gen and up?

More cores means your computer can do more tasks as once. This will make it better for running a lot of apps at the same time.

If you’re looking to stream and game I suggest you look at a dedicated Gaming laptop like an MSI vs the HP/Dell/Lenovo/Toshibas you can get at Best Buy.

Nothing wrong with the regular laptops, but a gaming laptop is built for that purpose. You’ll pay a lot more but it’s worth it if you’re a gamer.

In this age I wouldn’t get a laptop with less than 4 cores, 16gb of RAM, and get an SSD hard drive, that makes a huge difference in performance.

There’s also the difference between having a dedicated Video chip, vs using the one built into the CPU. Having a dedicated video chip will cost more but it’s worth it for gaming. If you don’t game the video chip built into the CPU will be just fine and will cost you less.

Anonymous 0 Comments

>How can i easily check and compare processors and how good they are? Is a I7 8750H 2.20GHz 8th generation and thus automatically worse than a 9th or 10th generation? Do i have to look at the GHz’s?

For CPU performance you want to be looking primarily at clock speed, number of cores, and cache size. Bigger number good there. New gen better. Power consumption is a running cost, so smaller number good, and a higher number generally needs better cooling, another expense.

>In what way does a laptop differ from a pc? I know a 3070 for a laptop isn’t as strong as a 3070 for pc, but is the same thing true for processors? And how do i know how big that difference is, without looking up reviews and comparisons?

Laptops have trash cooling due to their form factor. The better it looks, the lighter it is, the worse its performance will probably be. The clock speed is how you tell the difference there, laptops are underclocked.

>What exactly does the amount of cores change in a laptop? If i want to use my laptop to stream, do i look at the cores, the ram or am i automatically good with a 9th gen and up?

This question is thicc

If you’re streaming games as a primary use case, a laptop is probably a bad choice. Can’t upgrade graphics card, and the heat generation will degrade your hardware and eventually cause the computer to break under heavy usage. Heat degrades chips, and often computers run slow because the processor has to work around areas of the chip that don’t function.

The number of cores is (half) the number of hardware threads. Multithreaded software (most games) takes advantage of more cores, and performes better. Rich bois love those AMD Threadrippers, but I’m not the type of person to tell you to buy a $3k CPU.

More RAM is always better, buy as much as your budget allows, at the clock rate your mobo requires; [pcpartpicker](pcpartpicker.com) is your friend here. Highly recommend 32gb+ of ram for gaming on windows, less than that youll probably lag.

9th gen i5+ in intel land is probably sufficient for streaming games imo. AMD Ryzen 5+ too. If you don’t tolerate any lag, you really want this gen i9 or ryzen 9.

Good luck 🙂

Anonymous 0 Comments

There is a sub dedicated to helping people build PCs: /r/pcmasterrace

* It used to be that Mhz/GHz is everything, but the speeds have plateaued and now number of cores and newer architectures are king. A 3GHz CPU from 2021 will blow the doors off of a 3.5GHz CPU form a couple of years ago. Comparing benchmarks is probably best.
* PCs are a tradeoff, and there are many more tradeoffs in a laptop vs. a desktop. A desktop does not worry about power consumption, heat dissipation, weight, physical size, screen size/resolution, etc. You will get more bang for your buck from a desktop PC with the drawback that it is not portable.
* Modern CPUs are not just one CPU. The are a collection of identical CPUs on one chip. For example, if you have an 8 core CPU, you actually have 8 CPUs in one chip. If you are running many applications at once, or have applications that can run tasks in parallel very well. The more cores the better! Multicore for streaming will actually help you quite a bit, since you will be running the game, capturing the video, sending the video off to Twitch/YouTube etc.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I always imagine a PC set up like a room, in which you are inviting people to come to and get some food/drink before leaving.

The size of the room is your hard drives, the bigger the more people it can hold.

The ram is the number and size of the doors, the bigger they are the more people at once can enter the room via the doors.

The CPU is the waiting staff serving your people. The more you have the faster they are served, the more experienced they are (i7, i9 etc) the better they are at serving multiple people, perhaps you don’t need so many of they are more experienced ….i9 2.2ghz Vs i5 3.5GHz

Not quite worked out the GPU….that could be the amount of art you are selling in the room…..but you get the idea.

So if you have massive doors but not enough staff you will get a backlog of orders. Similarly if you have dinky doors your staff might be hanging around not doing anything as only one person can enter the room…

I also use this site for comparisons…seems to give you some good benchmarks
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/

Edit for spelling

Anonymous 0 Comments

> How can i easily check and compare processors and how good they are? Is a I7 8750H 2.20GHz 8th generation and thus automatically worse than a 9th or 10th generation? Do i have to look at the GHz’s?

GHz haven’t changed much over the last decade.

I would look at the I number (e.g., i3 vs i5 vs i7 vs i9) and the model number of the processor (e.g. 8750H). The “8th generation” is implicit in the “8” part of “8750H”.

> What exactly does the amount of cores change in a laptop? If i want to use my laptop to stream, do i look at the cores, the ram or am i automatically good with a 9th gen and up?

For streaming, I would recommend a laptop whose GPU has NVidia’s “NVENC” or AMD’s “VCN” technology. These are features whereby part of the GPU is used for the video stream encoding, taking the load off of the CPU for more consistent performance.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Within the same generation, you can compare core counts and clock speed. Outside of that you need benchmarks.

The biggest thing about a laptop is that it has much less physical space, power, and cooling capability, so they generally aren’t as fast as a desktop part of similar price and architecture.

For streaming games, you probably want at least 6 cores, More depending on game and stream settings.

Anonymous 0 Comments

>can’t run GTA V properly anymore.

So, it worked at some point?

Run a virus scan. If that finds something and things start to work, you’re good to go. Either way, if it’s not working, run rootkit scanners like [Sophos](https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-anti-rootkit.aspx) or [Malwarebytes](https://www.malwarebytes.com/antirootkit). Run an adware cleaner too, like [this.](https://www.malwarebytes.com/adwcleaner) Any other ones work too. These are free.

If none of that works, see if your computer is overheating. I once worked on a computer that had so much cat hair that I had to scoop a bunch out before I could even vacuum.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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