Hey Guys!
I'm just going to go straight into this one because its a log winded kind of topic, so enjoy.
You may or may not have heard of a CPU, and if you have,
you may not fully know what it’s all about. It. The Central Processing Unit, or
CPU for short, is pretty much the brains of the machine, whether it’s a video games
console, a computer or your mobile phone. Everything you wish to do on your
device like turn on the machine, or open a programme has a command sent to the
CPU which then sends a command to the area of the machine, like a human brain
if it’s easier for you to think of it like that.
However a CPU can’t just work
by itself, it’s not able to work hard without something helping it, like
humans, the more we work out, like playing a sport for example, and we get hot
and can get dizzy due to the heat right? Well this is effectively the same, the
CPU gets hotter the more work it has to do so it has to have both a heat sink
and a fan to help cool it down whilst the CPU does the work like receiving and
CPU’s are measured in a speed of GHz, which is short for the
word gigahertz. The higher number for the GHz, the quicker the processing speed
is, and can get more work done at once. The Xbox One, Microsoft’s console that
came out in 2013 has a processor speed of 1.75 GHz, which is equal to 1.75
billion cycles the processor has to do every second!
Manufacturers of the CPU’s can make the processing power
more powerful if they so wish, so how do they do this? They create multi-core
CPU’s, this could range to having 2 or 3 or even 4 more cores onto the CPU for
a lot more power, being able to process quicker and do more things at once, its
effectively giving the CPU more brains to process and carry out commands. The
overall workload of the CPU is shared between the cores to ease the use and
saves it overheating quicker. One example being of how the cores are shared is
that one core could be used dedicated to the physics and engine based
processes, and another could be dedicated to the sounds and animations of a
game for example, and this is all done by the games developers, they can pick
and choose how they wish to share it out.
One of the most important thing with the CPU is the CPU
cache, it’s a component with the CPU which works effectively like our memories
(another reason to think of it like a brain) it’s used to reduce the average
time to access memory. Like humans, if we need to write about something and we
need to remember something to write, we would get it written down quicker than
if we forgotten it and had to go on the internet and search for it, this is
pretty much the same. If a process needs to write or read from a location in
the memory, it checks the CPU cache, to see if there is a copy of the data
stored for it to use, if there is a copy, the CPU would use it and it would
save time, instead of having to go and search for it and complete the process
that way.
Data Buses are a collection of wires which transmits data to
and from areas of the computer, and is called a data bus for that reason, like
real buses, except for data in a computer. There are two parts of a data bus,
one being the address bus and the data bus itself. The actual data is carried
thought the data bus itself and the address bus transfers the information on
where the data bus is meant to be going to. Now, you may have seen on your
computer whether it’s a 16-bit computer or a 32-bit computer and you may not
have known what it meant. It’s the size of the data bus, its important because
it determines how much data a data bus can carry in one trip. 16-bit would be 16 bits of data being carried
at once by one data bus,whilst 32-bit means 32 bits can be carried at once.
Moving on..
Video games graphics but a ton of stress on the CPU, the brain
of the computer, and like humans, we don’t like stress and now and then like
some help, and this is where the GPU comes into place. It’s built specifically
for video games graphics and allowing the CPU to free up some of its processors
for something else, this takes a lot of stress of the processor and is a great
help to it. Without it the processor could have got really hot and not work as
quick and you would intend it to do.
There are in fact different types of GPU, you could have an
integrated graphics processor, which uses the memory from the main computer to
run graphics, the bad side to this is that it could really slow down your
processor which is never a good thing. Another form of GPU would be dedicated
graphics cards.
Consoles such as the Xbox 360 and the PS3 have dedicated and
specifically built GPUs for their machines for memory intensive games.
Here are some examples of GPUS, NVidia GTX 680, GTX 770, and
GTX Titan.
Similar to the speed of the CPU’s being GHz, GPU’s are
measured in MHz for their speed, which is short for megahertz. An example would
be the GPU speed of the Xbox One being 853 MHz and comparing that to the Xbox
360, the Xbox One’s predecessor, it has 500 MHz, now you know how much faster
it is, quite a lot faster.
You need to consider how much memory is available to the GPU
because it will also have an effect on the performance of the game, the higher
textures and details in a game, the more power the GPU needs.
Random Access Memory, also most commonly known as RAM for
short, is available in the video card, this helps with better resolution
settings, and smoother game performance in general. The smoother the game, the
better experience you have playing it. And we all like at least over 30 FPS at
least when playing a game.
You may not realise it but 3D models also have an impact on
games performance, and GPU performance. There’s two types of 3D Modelling, one
being a long winded name being, Non – Uniform Rational B – Spline, or a much
easier term for it, NURBS. This type of modelling is used t create curves, this
takes up a lot less memory from the GPU. Polygon modelling on the other hand is
a lot more strenuous on the GPU due to the fact the object it’s created from a
lot more smaller number of elements.
This is all CPU and GPU covered, it’s fairly simple once you
understand it, it’s effectively the brain of a computer and its best friend, so yeah until next time.
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