Question

You have just upgraded a customer’s computer with an Intel Xeon W3505 with a rated clock speed of 2.53 GHz, but the customer suspects that you have actually installed a slower processor. He believes his computer is running more slowly than it should if you installed the correct CPU. You are sure you installed the correct CPU. What do you say is the most likely explanation for the difference between the rated speed of the CPU and the customer’s actual experience?

A. The CPU unit, and all accompanying packaging, was mislabeled at the factory and is really a much slower Xeon CPU.

B. The rated clock speed for all CPUs indicates the theoretical performance maximums, but no CPU performs at those speeds due specifically to inherit limitations in computer DRAM.

C. The actual CPU speed in a production computer is almost never its actual rated speed due to a variety of hardware and software considerations such as the bus speed of the motherboard and other configuration settings.

D. For a CPU to perform at its rated speed, it requires that another chip be added to the motherboard’s northside bus to augment and boost the CPU clock speed to the listed specifications.

Answer 1

C. The overall processing speed of a computer is affected by a wide variety of factors, not just the rated clock speed, such as the bus speed of the motherboard and other hardware and software configurations.