Making Sense of CPU and GPU Model Numbers?

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 8, 2010 @10:20PM from the drowning-in-a-sea-of-specs dept.

b4dc0d3r writes "How do you make sense of the various model numbers or naming schemes for CPUs, graphics cards, and the related chipsets? All I want is something that will run Oblivion and output full 1080 video to a TV. Last time I built my own computer I just went to Pricewatch, made a few easy choices, and everything came to my door. Do I really have to research the differences among Core i5, Core 2 Duo, Pentium 4, Pentium D, Sempron, Athlon, Phenom ...? And that's just the processor. Is there a reference somewhere? In short, how do you buy a computer these days?"

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Virtualization by seifried · 2010-03-08 22:54 · Score: 5, Interesting

Another reason to choose AMD over Intel, Intel has some CPUs that support the new virtualization extensions and some that don't. AMD OTOH supports the virtualization extensions across the line. That and AMD quad cores are stupid cheap now. Unless you have a really pressing need for a really high end CPU get the AMD.