Know Your CPU with Intel Processor Identification Utility

I remember when I bought my first PC, the salesman showed me the label on the PC box saying that it was the best CPU available in the market. Like a gullible fellow that I was, I believed him and bought it right away. Only after a few days, I started to realize that it was mediocre computer and did not have the CPU that was printed on the label. Now, from the experience gained through a series of rip-offs, I no longer buy branded PC, instead I tend to assemble my own PC from components bought mostly online. This way I have complete control over what features I want in the PC and what type of hardware components I want to use. I can spend more money on memory or CPU or the display screen, as I wish.

But if you are a novice PC user, then perhaps you have to resort to buying only branded pre-assembled computers. If you have bought a new PC, then how would you know that it contains the same CPU as the salesman told you or as was advertised on the online shopping site? For example, there are many variations of Intel Core i5 processors – some of them have 2 cores and others have 4 cores – they may belong to 2nd, 3rd or 4th generations. Thanks to the Intel Processor Identification Utility, now you can know all the details of the installed Intel CPU in a few seconds.

You can get the Intel Processor Identification Utility from the Intel support website. It need not be mentioned that this utility can only be installed on Intel computers and not on AMD computers. After the installation, you can launch it from the desktop shortcut or from the search charm in Windows 8.

Intel Processor Identification Utility

It clearly displays the model and name of your Intel CPU along with a CPU logo. It shows you the basic features of the CPU like the clock frequency (speed), system bus speed, L3 cache size, number of cores and threads. On the CPU Technologies tab, you can see whether it supports virtualization, hyper-threading, 64-bit architecture, VT-x, AES instructions and other features. On the CPUID tab, you can see the socket type, different types of cache, chipset ID, integrated GPU etc.

Conclusion: The Intel Processor Identification Utility is very handy tool for identifying the Intel CPU in your computer and finding out more about the features that it supports. It can tell you about the number of cores, number of threads, integrated graphics chipset, CPU speed, L3 or L2 cache and much more.

You can download Intel Processor Identification Utility from http://www.intel.com/.