RAM
RAM stands for Random Access Memory. It is primary memory. It stores all the currently-running applications and calculations and processes of the computer. There are different types of RAM: DRAM, SRAM and SDRAM, DDRAM2 and DDRAM3. The latest type of RAM was released this year, 2014, and it is called DDRAM4: higher module density and lower voltage requirements, coupled with higher data rate transfer speeds
Differences:
- usage of applications is limited
- not enough RAM doesn't allow downloading programs or the use of them
- regular use of virtual memory which is a temporary file in the hard disk (extremely slow to access and store)
- usage of applications is limited
- stores application until it needs to be flushed to free space.
- Here are two examples of the minimum system requires in order to be able to run these OS in your computer:
OS X Lion system requirements
To use Lion, make sure your computer has the following:- An Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
- Mac OS X v10.6.6 or later to install via the Mac App Store (v10.6.8 recommended)
- 7 GB of available disk space
- 2 GB of RAM
Windows 8.1 System requirements
If you want to run Windows 8.1 on your PC, here's what it takes:- Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2
- RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
- Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
- Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver
CPU
- Amount of processes per second is limited
- If you only have one core multi tasking will be more slower
- If you have a 32-bit CPU you won’t be able to processe 64-bit data but when you have a 64-bit CPU you can process both 64-bit and 32-bit data. A 64-bit CPU means that you can process 64bits of data per second
Screen Size/ Resolution.
- HD resolution starts at 1920x1080 pixels.
- Retina display in a mac is 326 ppi (Pixels per inch).
- There are many different types of screens, for example LCD, LED, OLED, CRT and Plasma. The most used are LCD and LED, LED uses less electricity and can be made thinner than LCD screens. Plasma screens use gases and can produce smoother fast motion than the others, but as the quality of LED and LCD increases plasmas are starting to decrease production OLED monitors are the most recent type of display can can display a very bright and more colourful picture. CRT monitors have a good resolution but the physical aspects are poor as they are thick, heavy and consume a lot of electricity, nevertheless they are cheaper than other technologies.
Graphics Card
A common monitor can display about one million pixels, but it needs something to coordinate where to place each pixel and what pixels to display. Therefore a graphics card acts as a translator between the CPU and the screen. It converts the binary data in the CPU into an image on the screen. A computer however may not need a graphics card as it’s functions can be implemented into it’s motherboard.A graphics card needs four things:
- A motherboard for data and power.
- Memory used to hold data and completed memory.
- A monitor to see the final result.
- A processor to decide what to do with each pixel.