What does a CPU do?

If you’ve got any interest in gaming PCs and their components you have probably wondered what a CPU does. We’re here to break it down for you.

CPUs are a component that almost all gamers will be familiar with. Many will know what a CPU is, and that it has a huge impact on the performance of your PC. You might know what CPU stands for, but we’re here for the nitty gritty, to explain precisely what role this component plays. Let’s get into it.

What does a CPU do?

The simplest way to think of a CPU, almost known as a processor or chip, is as the brain of your computer. It receives and sends instructions from the other bits of hardware, allowing data and commands to flow throughout your PC. When you download a program or game, you are essentially downloading a set of commands for your CPU. These commands tell it what to do under specific inputs and circumstances. Your processor is constantly checking these instructions and then executing the commands.

In the very early days of computers, they were only capable of one specific task. This means they had to be physically rewired if you wanted that purpose to change. CPU facilitated a move away from this, allowing programmers to write code that the processor would then interpret and distribute. Let’s take an example to break this down.

What does a CPU do in gaming?

Let’s say you’re playing a game and press the ‘jump’ key. The keypress is registered in the CPU as an external input. It then checks the game’s code and sees that the key press means ‘jump’. To execute this command your CPU does several things. It sends a request to memory to update the game state to reflect this jump. It also is responsible for executing the calculations required by the game physics engine to figure out your character’s new velocity. Finally, it then sends the necessary information to your GPU, which uses it to render the graphics which are sent to your monitor.

This example, while simplified, gives a good overview of a CPU’s function. It is responsible for coordinating and distributing the tasks to other components, as well as executing many itself. From this, it’s not hard to see why having one of the best CPUs for gaming, can have such an impact on performance. If you want to know more about the differences between a CPU vs GPU, we’ve got an article covering just that.

Frequently asked questions

While we’ve done our best to explain what a CPU does, no doubt you have still been left with some questions. Hopefully, we have answered some of them below.

Why is a good CPU important?

CPUs function as the brain of your PC, the more powerful one is, the more commands it can handle in a given space of time. If you’re CPU is not up to scratch, you will get a backlog of tasks for it to complete which will slow your computer down.

What is inside a CPU?

A modern CPU is made from billions and billions of tiny transistors, that compute the actual information. These transistors are microscopic in size and connected on layers of silicon.