How to build a computer Part #1 – Choosing a processor

AMD have two major retail product ranges, which include Athlon II and Phenom II. At the time of writing this article, AMD have released a new processor with built in graphics, but it’s still very new technology and is called an APU as opposed to a CPU, so we’ll disregard that range of products for the moment.

Athlon II offers fantastic value for money when needed most, whereas Phenom II offers the same, but has a slightly better performance in comparison, but obviously costs a little bit more.

AMD processors come in a choice of Dual, Tri, Quad and Hexa-Core ranges, which basically means two, three, four and six cores processors. A core is typically explained as a physical CPU within a CPU. So essentially you could have six physical cores within one CPU.

AMD’s flagship processor at the time of writing this is the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T and is what we at eTeknix use frequently in a lot of our tests and benchmarks.