1. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Chapter 6 Understanding and Assessing Hardware: Evaluating Your System To buy or upgrade? Evaluating your system: – CPU – RAM – Storage devices – Video output – Sound systems 1

2. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. To Buy or To Upgrade? Things to consider: Moore’s Law (Gordon Moore, Intel) - CPU increases x 2 every 1.5yrs (On YouTube Moore said every 1yr and later, every 2yrs) also RAM incrs 60% per 1yr; HDD (hard disk drive) incrs 50% per 1 yr Cost of upgrading vs. buying Time installing software and files Needs and wants 2

3. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Omit: Desktop or Notebook or …? Desktop – Hard to move around – Less expensive – Harder to steal – Easier to upgrade – Difficult to ship (repairs) Notebook – Portable – More expensive – Easily stolen – Difficult to upgrade – Prone to damage – -yet… ExpressCards can be installed to expand (analgous to expansoin cards on desktop) 3

4. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Evaluating the CPU How does the CPU work? (works together with RAM) – 2 parts: – Control unit – Arithmetic logic unit (ALU) – Machine cycle (4 steps): Fetch – Decode – Execute – Store – Speed: GHz – Common speeds: desktop: 2- 4 GHz – Ex: 3 GHz = 3 giga Hertz = 3 billion cycles per second (clock cycles ~ instructions per sec) 4

5. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Differentiating CPUs’ power Clock speed (previous slide) Number of cores (next slide) – Core: A complete processing section from a CPU embedded into the same physical chip – Number of threads – hyperthreading: a secondary set of instructions can start in CPU before the last set is finished Cache memory – high speed expensive memory on the CPU. Levels 1, 2, 3. Omit - FSB – front side bus (think bus route b/c it is the route for signals between CPU and RAM). Not listed on newest CPU spec list 5

6. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Multi-core processors 6 Ex: In a Dual (2) core CPU, one core executes the OS and the other everything else. With a multi-core processor each task being executed has the ALL of the CPU’s resources and does not share them with another task as in the 3 rd CPU pictured. 3rd picture shows hyperthreading Question: How many cores on the 1 st CPU? the 2 nd ?

7. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Evaluating the CPU Identify your CPU: right-click Computer, Properties (or click Sys Props button in Computer) Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

8. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Some CPUs CPUs for desktops diff than for laptops. See Intel/AMD website for more models and spec sheets. 8 desktop Intel Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 AMD Phenom X4 FX8150

9. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. CPU spec sheet examples Example: Intel E6700 Core 2 Duo (64-bit): 2.66 Ghz speed 4 MB L2 cache 2C/2T (cores/threads) Bus/core ratio: 10 1066 MHz FSB (Front Side Bus) Newer example: Intel Core i5-680 (64-bit): 3.6 GHz and w/ turbo 3.8 Ghz speed, 4MB Smart Cache, 2C/4T (cores/threads) bus/core ratio: 27 2.5 GT/s DMI (giga transfers per sec); no FSB # mentioned 9

10. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. RAM (names for) Random access memory (RAM): – TemporaryVolatile – Temporary storage (memory) also called Volatile Physical memory Memory modules fit on motherboard into memory banks (slots) Module also called dual inline memory modules (DIMMs) – DDR2, DDR3 DDR3 newer faster – Omit: SDRAM (typical RAM type) – (SRAM, DRAM -not on test) Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

11. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. How Much RAM Do You Need? Kernel memory (that needed for OS) Windows 7 recommended memory min: 2 GB Need RAM for operating system, application software, and data all to run at same time Sample RAM requirements: ApplicationMinimum RAM Required Windows 71000 MB Microsoft Office Professional 2007256 MB Internet Explorer 8128 MB iTunes256 MB Adobe Photoshop Elements512 MB Total RAM required to run all programs simultaneously 2,152 MB or 2.15 GB Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

12. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Typical types of RAM Types common now: DDR2, DDR3 (newer) DDR = double data rate; DDR3 is faster than and newer than DDR2 12

13. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Adding RAM Increases system performance (May need to add more if your system is slower over the years) Check your RAM amount: right-click Computer, Properties (or click Sys Props button in Computer) To upgrade, find out from your manual, or crucial.com req’d RAM amounts & specs for your computer model: – Type of module (common: RAM DDR3) – Maximum total limit, maximum limit per slot – Maximum limit for your operating system Common size: 4-24GB (expandable to 24 GB) Easy to do and reasonably priced 13

14. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Omit: Virtual Memory Memory bound (sys that runs out of RAM space) Virtual memory (also page file)– When system runs out of RAM, hard drive space is resorted to. Drawback = speed is slowed. That is, RAM operates in nanosecs (1/billion= 1/1,000,000,000 ) and Hard Disk Drive operates in millisecs (1/1000) Increasing RAM can avoid this problem Identify your amounts of RAM and virtual memory: type “system information” into search 14

15. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. HDD and SSD HDD – hard disk drive – Common storage capacity: 320 GB, 500 GB, 640GB, 1 TB, 2 TB – 4TB (Terabytes) – Access time (in milliseconds) - time to locate and make avail for processing – Omit: Data transfer rate (in MB per sec) – Spindle speed is measured in revolutions per minute (rpm) typical: 5400 rpm, 7200 rpm, 10,000 rpm SSD – solid state drive – expensive – similar technology to the USB drive (i.e. chips) – no heat, no noise, no spinning discs 15

16. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. How a Hard Disk Works Composed of iron oxide coated platters stacked on a spindle Data saved to the disk: pattern of magnetized spots (0s and 1s) read/write heads access each platter surface (platter=disc) Check your C: Drive size: Right-click C: drive, Properties 16 Platters Read/write head Access arms

17. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Optical Storage Optical media: Store data as tiny pits burned into a disc by a laser; nonpits=lands – Prerecorded CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, BD-ROM – Recordable CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R – Rewritable (rewrite again and again) CD-RW, DVD-RW, BD-RE Omit: A DVD-RW burner will burn CDs and DVDs; Omit: A Blu-ray burner will most likely burn CDs and DVDs Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

18. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Omit: Optical Storage Be aware of the variety of DVDs and Blu-ray discs – Read your products label to determine which to buy: ex: DVD+R/RW (plus) DVD-R/RW (dash), DVD-RAM Omit: Speeds: write, rewrite, play in that order: – Ex 52x32x52x - “52x” the original technology’s speed Going from CD, to DVD to Blu-ray (BD) drives, their size capacities and speeds increase. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

19. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Video Card Process binary data into images Attach to motherboard as expansion card (else “integrated”) Contain memory: video memory (VRAM) types: GDDR3, GDDR5 Contain own Processor (GPU) 19

20. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Video Card To determine specs of your video card (graphics card) -- go to screen resolution settings screen in Control Panel, click Advanced button Ports on video card: – S-video to connect to TV, stereo or VCR, – DVI to connect to digital LCDs – HDMI to connect to HD TV 20

21. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Sound card Attach to motherboard as expansion card (on lower end PCs it may be “integrated” on motherboard) Process digital data into sounds 21

22. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Omit: Evaluating System Reliability Performance: – Is slow – Freezes – Crashes Upkeep and maintenance: – System tools – Control panel – Update software, and hardware drivers (Windows update can include Microsoft’s other software) 22

23. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Omit: Upkeep and Maintenance System tools: – Disk defragmenter – Disk cleanup – Add/remove programs – Run anti-virus and anti-spyware scans – Updates Windows – Update programs 23

24. © 2009 Prentice-Hall, Inc. Omit: The Last Resort If problems persist: First… – Try reinstalling the software application that is the probable cause (e.g. maybe you just attempted installing a new program) – Create a restore point Drastic measures… – Reinstall (“recover”) the operating system – Upgrade the operating system to the latest version 24