Whether you are a first-time buyer or are upgrading your computer system, when the time comes to make your computer buying decision, you might find yourself overwhelmed by the vast amount of information available to you. There are thousands of computer advertisements in magazines and newspapers which list detailed technical specifications for their products. To get the best deal on a computer that meets your needs, you need to understand what these technical specifications mean and how they will affect your computing power. This Buyer's Guide will help you to organize your purchasing decisions. This guide also includes a worksheet that you can use to summarize your specifications for a computer and compare prices and features.

Free Ebook Computer Hardware: Buyer's Guide.pdf

Determining your computer's architecture

Once you have established the basic configuration of your desired computer system, you need to think about the computer architecture. These technical specifications will ultimately determine your computing power.

• The microprocessor is the core component in a computer. Computer ads typically indicate the type of microprocessor, the company that manufactured the microprocessor, and the microprocessor's speed. Intel and AMD are currently the two major PC microprocessor manufacturers. Computers that contain Intel processors command higher prices than computers that contain other manufacturers' processors.
  • AMD produces "work-alike" processors for PC-compatible processors. AMD processors offer manufacturers and customers an alternative to processors produced by Intel. AMD processors are generally less expensive than their Intel counterparts, but have many of the same features and capabilities of Intel processors.......more

• Intel also produces a "budget" processor called Celeron, which has a slightly less sophisticated architecture than Pentium models.
• AMD produces K6 and Athlon processors that compete directly with Intel's Pentium and Celeron processors. From a user's perspective, it is virtually impossible to find any operational differences between computers that use AMD processors and those with Intel processors.
If you want to run Macintosh software, select a computer with a 68000-series or PowerPC microprocessor. Until 1994, Macintosh computers contained a 68000-series microprocessor manufactured by Motorola. More recent models, called "Power Macs" contain a PowerPC microprocessor.
• When purchasing a processor, two components to consider are speed and cache capacity.
  • Speed: Processor speed is a measure of clock rate, which is an indication of the number of instructions that can be processed per second. A computer with a 550 MHz processor would be faster than a computer with a 500 MHz processor if all other specifications for the two computers being compared were equal. Manufacturers charge a premium price for speed. For certain applications, such as 3-D games and desktop publishing, the fastest processor can be very desirable. Applications such as word processing and e-mail don't seem to benefit as much from accelerated clock speeds.
  • Cache capacity: RAM cache is special high-speed circuitry that holds data just before the processor needs it. In theory, having a large cache area increases processing speed. Cache capacity is tied to the processor model. For example, a Celeron processor typically has 128 KB cache, whereas a Pentium IV typically has a 512 KB cache.
  Cache contributes to the speed of the chip and is often referred to in computer ads. The cache chip connects to the main processor by a dedicated high-speed bus and is often housed in the same chip carrier as the processor. With today's computer architecture, cache is not configurable.
  • Level 1 cache (L1 cache) is built into the processor chip.
  • Level 2 cache (L2 cache) is memory circuitry housed off the processor on a separate chip. Level 2 cache is much faster than RAM and almost as fast as cache built into the processor chip.

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