This article deals with personal computers ones for home or small business use. Vendors or people that sell you computers will try to convince you that CPU (microprocessor) speed or model. Play the most important part in determining a computers speed this is false the most important is RAM size. Providing the same operating system e.g. Windows XP is the same.

People underestimate the importance of ram, because they do not know how it works in the computer. Imagine you are cooking in your kitchen and the meal is your computer output. The kitchen is your computer system the kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator are your hard drive the cook or you is the CPU. The Kitchen table is the ram. The oven and the stove are your output devices e.g' Printer, audio and display. The larger your kitchen table the faster and more complex of a meal you can complete with your kitchen. As is the larger the ram is the faster your computer is.

People who play video games should avoid computers with onboard video. Because computer games need video ram. Recommend at least 128 megabyte video card and you should be able to play most games. The computer can do most of its for playing games in the video card, hence a faster video card means faster computing. Here again microprocessor speed will not increase your video game performance nearly as much as a better video card.

Hard drives there are three types Parallel, Sata and SCSI. SCSI also known as Skuzzy is the fastest but also is very expensive. Most computer use parallel it is the most common type and the slowest. The new type Sata or serial hard drive is quicker than parallel, but not as expensive as skuzzy. If you do allot of work with data make sure your computer has a serial hard drive. Remember you need a mother board that supports serial hard drive the older ones do not.

In conclusion don't spend money on a quicker microprocessor for a faster computer.