The Computeen

When you're looking for a new laptop, whether it's for yourself, a child or a loved one, the numberless choices can be daunting! What's the CPU? What does '4GB RAM' mean? Let's find out! There are a few different factors you need to think about when buying a laptop, and we're going to look at them each quickly to help you to make the right choice! CPU (Processor) All laptops will advertise their CPU, or they may call it a Processor. The CPU/Processor is like the brain of a computer, and so having a good CPU is very important. The CPU will (in part) dictate the responsiveness of the laptop, and generally improve the quality of the experience. Unfortunately most CPUs have obscure, unusual names, and can be hard to compare performance wise. To help you with the job, there's a table below detailing a comparison of some of the most common CPUs, in different price categories (Best at the top). RAM Many laptops will also advertise the size of their RAM. This w

On the 27th of October, Intel gave the exciting announcement that they would be releasing their 12th generation of Core Series CPUs. Although their past few generations have been ... less than amazing, these new CPUs hold real promise, and may provide AMD with some strong competition! Overview Not only do these new CPUs have competitive performance, they are also priced fairly competitively against AMD's offerings, especially at the lower end. Intel had been struggling to excite the community, with their 11th Gen CPUs actually being a downgrade from their 10th generation in some cases, but this is a sign that things are changing. Not only does this give consumers more options, but it encourages growth and innovation in the CPU market. If one company becomes dominant, as Intel did in the decade before Zen, technological advances are rare and insignificant, as the company has no real reason to spend money developing new technology, when no one else can compete with them anyway. This

HDLs. They might seem a daunting prospect at first look, but, once mastered, they are powerful tools for Hardware Design. A Hardware Descriptive Language, is a special kind of programming language used to describe the functioning of a hardware design. They can be used to describe everything from simple embedded system designs, to complete x64 CPU designs. While a normal, software programming language essentially contains a list of instructions that a computer has to carry out, a HDL works by describing an algorithm that a piece of hardware has to be able to carry out. A clever compiler then 'translates' this into an actual combination of logic gates which can carry out the algorithm. HDLs can be used to program FPGAs (post coming soon on them, and how they work), as well as ASIC solutions (permanent hardware set ups, like CPUs and SoCs). Let's find out a little more about them then shall we?  The options: There are a few different options of HDL. The two most well used are

You may have heard the term CPU Architecture, or Computer architecture, but what does it actually mean? Let's find out! There are three main things that these terms usually refer to, two of which are much more common than the last.  Commercial Performance-Improvement Architecture  The first, and probably most common meaning is the design of a particular release of CPUs from a major company, (for example Zen, Zen+, Skylake, or Alder Lake to name a few). Newer kinds of these architectures generally offer superior performance, or lower power consumption, but fundamentally they use the same design ideas. They might have slightly more ALUs, or a slightly larger cache, better branch prediction, more I/O support, etc, but they are fundamentally the same. There are large differences between different architectures from different companies like AMD and Intel, but they actually have a lot in common as we're about to see: CPU Use-Case-Adaptation Design  An alternative meaning is the more

When you're building you're first PC, not everyone has £1000 to spend on a computer. With cheaper laptops offering acceptable performance for most things, justifying a more premium priced PC can be harder. Truthfully, for most day to day tasks, you don't really need anything other than a cheap laptop, unless you're gaming, or doing other demanding activities like video editing. This guide is for those who want a cheap computer, but need a little extra power. If you're just interested in browsing the Internet and writing up a few documents, you'll probably be fine with a cheap laptop, but the fact that you can get a much more powerful machine for around the same price screams of lost opportunity. Let's dive in and see how this is possible. Options We have two options, upgrade a cheap office PC, or start something from scratch. Which is best depends on what deals you can get, as to enable a PC for this price, we need to go second hand. We'll consider both

There was a dark time, not that long ago when one tech company held the world in it's fist. They were the only choice for a high performance CPU, and that safety led them to grow stagnant. Their name? Intel. There wasn't much reason to push forward and make better chips, so they didn't. They just sold refreshes and chips with slight tweaks to make a profit. But then, one day in 2017, the opposition unleashed a weapon that they had been hiding. It was the beginning of the end for Intel. Their weapon? The Zen architecture. AMD stood up to Intel when no one else could. This marked the beginning of a huge arms race, a fight were each team would fight tooth and nail to gain the performance crown and the support of the community. Eventually  AMD came out on top, but even now they're not safe. Both teams are currently waiting, busy thinking up a new plan of attack. In all seriousness, AMD's Zen architecture, and their first Ryzen CPUs began to bring competition back to the