How do cores, i5s/i7s/i9s, different GHz, and 16/32 GB of memory affect a computer performance when working together?

Question

I want to get a new computer because I’m an educator and I’d like to start designing a website, making video content, writing long documents, photoshop, and other content creation.

I’m looking at a MacBook but the research on how all of the cpus work with cores work with ghz speed work with different memory sizes is making my head spin.

Please, ELI5, show me how all of these things work together as if they were one functioning system. All I can find are articles that explain each separately, but not how each impacts the other. Thank you!

In: Technology

Answer 1

So a computer is mainly two things – Processor and memory.

Any software needs to be stored in some kind of really fast memory (also called RAM) when you use that software. “GB” is a way of measuring how much fast memory you have. 8 GB is the norm these days, 16 GB is quite enough for what you want to do with the computer.

The other thing is processor. This is what actually does the “Work”, like showing a website in the browser, apply the photoshop filters to photos etc.. i5/i7/i9 are the processors made by Intel inside your Mac.

There are two factors that make a processor fast: **How many calculations it can do every second** (GHz) and **How many calculations can it do at the same time in parallel** (Cores).

^(Usually i5 has 2 to 4 cores, i7 has 2 to 6 cores and i9 has 6 or more cores. Each core of i5 has usually less GHz than i7, and same goes for i7 and i9. (This statement is not always true hence I made it small))

Since we’re only talking about Macs, it’s sufficient for you to know that i5 is less capable than i7 and i7 is less capable than i9.

**Processors are usually much much faster than memory. Your processor is almost always doing nothing while your memory is holding a fair amount of stuff.**

Since your work is more than just ‘basic’ work, I’ll recommend you i7 processor with 16 GB RAM because Macs are expensive and you need to future-proof yourself a little bit if you’re buying one. Also look out for something called a GPU (or Graphics Cards). Some macs also come with those and they can speed up your content creation quite a lot.

Edit: Redundant Text