Laptop Choosing Guide, Part 1 - Processor

Laptop major parts are: processor, memory, hard drive, video card and display screen. Now let's see what kind of which do you need for your laptop.

Part 1 -- Processor
Processor performance is determined by following parameters: number of cores, core speed, front side bus speed and amount of cache.

Number of cores. Processor with multiple cores does a way better job in multitasking than a single core one. Usual modern computer runs many tasks same time (browser, email client, antivirus, etc...), so dual core processor gives a very noticeable performance boost comparing to single core. From the other point processor with 4 cores and more is usually overkill, because current state of software does not allow using four cores to the full power. Usually dual core processor is the best in terms of performance for money.
Core speed. The more GHz processor has the faster it is. For simple tasks like browsing, checking email, watching videos, listening to music and creating documents you don't need a powerful processor. 1.7 GHz dual core is enough. If you are going to play games, encode video/music, use photo or video editors, then you need a faster processor. Depending on tasks 2.0 GHz dual core or better.
Front side bus speed. You probably have seen something like 667 MHz FSB in laptop processor specifications. Now you will know what does this mean. The more speed FSB has the faster data between processor and memory could be transferred. Faster FSB does not have such a great impact on processor performance like core speed does, but with same core speed 800 Mhz FSB processor maybe 5-10% faster than 667 MHz FSB processor. Depends on tasks a lot too.

Amount of cache. That's the amount of internal memory processor has. Like FSB speed it also does not affect processor performance that much, but still, the more the better. Typical values for modern processors are 512KB--3MB.

Thanks To : Acer Aspire Timeline AS5810TZ-4433 Sony VAIO VPC-EB15FM/T