Hello, everyone! I’ve been doing some research into computer hardware lately, and one thing that I keep coming across is this idea that the speed of a processor, while important, isn’t the only thing that affects a computer’s overall performance. I’m having a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around this because I always thought that a faster processor meant a faster computer. Can anyone explain why this isn’t necessarily the case? I’m really interested to learn more about this!
In: 97
I’ll try a real ELI5.
The processor is like a really fast mathematician sitting in a room and calculating stuff. You can bring him math problems and he will solve them for you. The faster the mathematician the better.
Until the mathematician is so fast that the door to his room is not wide enough to bring all the problems to him and collect all the solutions. Then it makes no sense to hire an even faster mathematician, you need to build a bigger door first.
How wide the door needs to be depends on the problem. If the problems are easy the matematician solves them quickly and needs more problems per hour delivered to him. If the problems are hard, you don’t need a door that wide. This is why the optimal configuration of the PC depends on the type of programs you usually run.
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