You are building a custom PC for a customer and are currentl

You are building a custom PC for a customer and are currently attempting to install an AMD Athlon 64 processor on the motherboard. You discover that the CPU is incompatible with the processor socket on the brand-new motherboard. You look at the motherboards manual and see that the socket is Socket AM3, which is compatible for AMD Phenom, Athlon, and Sempron processors; however, the pin count is different between the AMD Athlon 64 CPU you are trying to install and the Socket AM3. What is the most likely problem?

A. The AMD Athlon 64 is an older chip compatible with the Socket AM2 and Socket AM2+. The Socket AM3 is not backwardly compatible and will not accommodate the CPU you’re trying to install.

B. The AMD Athlon 64 is compatible with a Socket AM3a, but the motherboard you have has an AM3b socket, suitable only for multithreading processors.

C. The AMD Athlon 64 is a “cutting edge” CPU, and even though you are working with a brand-new motherboard, it does not have the compatible Socket AM4 with the correct pin count required for such new technology.

D. The AMD Athlon 64 is an older chip, but the Socket AM3 should be backwardly compatible and allow the CPU to be installed. You likely have a faulty chip with a missing pin.

Solution

C. The “real” speed of a CPU tends to be measured in cycles per second, typically millions of cycles per second (GHz) in modern CPUs, but other factors affect the speed of a PC, including overclocking the CPU to force it to run at a higher clock rate, the model of CPU, since some use a different number of cycles to perform the same task, the amount and speed of the onboard RAM, and the bus speed of the computer. Of course, the most important gaming-related computer component is the graphics card.