How Much Speed is Enough?
If you follow what is happening in the hardware world with computers, then you will be aware that processor manufacturer Intel has recently released its latest Generation 7 series of (CPU’s) central processor units. Intel is by far the biggest player in this industry and it is the computers’ CPU that is the ‘brain’ of every PC. Whereas we have an intelligence quotient (IQ) rating for people, the brain of a computer (CPU) is rated against other computer brains by a benchmark system.
So exactly how dumb or how smart can a computer be? This is not really the question to ask as computers are really only as ‘smart’ as their software allows. The differences in computer CPU benchmarks really only show up as speed comparisons. Computer ‘x’ will take so many seconds or split seconds to perform an operation whereas computer ‘y’ may take twice as long.
How far apart can computers be in terms of speed? I had a look at the desktop PC’s that Officeworks currently lists for sale and have published their respective prices and CPU power benchmarks here below. In order of cheapest tower PC to dearest tower PC.
$397 – BM835, $459 – BM1873, $647 – BM2621, $847 – BM6677, $997 – BM10029
From this it is interesting to see that their dearest model is in fact 12 times faster than their base model however it is only 2.5 times dearer. Depending on budget at the above shop, I personally would either purchase the $459 model or the $997 one. Computers can all be rated on their CPU power or speed levels and besides software setup, ram amount and hard drive type it is the CPU which will have the greatest effect on speed.
I hear a lot of people saying “I don’t need a really fast PC”. My answer is – yes you do. I don’t have any customers using the Internet with a 10-year-old PC. Why not? If protected by a UPS a computer is quite capable of lasting 10 years – however it would be simply too slow. It is too slow because software, internet security and internet sites have changed dramatically in the last 10 years. These changes are not going to stop here.
To securely and effectively use the Internet you need a recent operating system, an up-to-date anti-virus and enough power to run multimedia applications such as YouTube and other content rich websites. You even need minimum levels of security to do Internet banking. These are simply not possible anymore on an older computer.
With the release of Intel’s latest Gen 7 CPU’s they have further optimised these computer ‘brains’ for watching video content, for running the latest operating systems such as Windows 10 and also for reducing their power consumption. We have already built and sold the first of our own Gen 7 computers this week and they certainly do perform well.
We are also now stocking HP laptops that have their own mobile versions of the Gen 7 CPU’s as new computer buyers should be demanding this latest technology. As I have said many times in the past – IT never stands still and if you want to keep using it then you have to consider an upgrade every 3 to 5 years.
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 49 222 400.
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