What overloads a cpu?

[Complexic_1]

I'm just looking for basic info on what exactly overloads a cpu. I was watching a stream and the guy was doing a review of a vod. He had to close a program because the vod was lagging the stream. He said "too much going on for the cpu". Was this just his lingo or does running too many programs at once. (like high quality programs like games, video software, or just youtube videos) If any of this has been answered before please go ahead and link the thread.

 

[synphul]

Too many programs actively accessing the cpu at once can slow things down. It depends on the cpu, whether it's 2 core, 4 core, 6, 8 etc. Hyperthreaded cpu's like i7's can handle heavy loads a bit more efficiently but is still limited to how many cores it has. Depending what program has priority and how windows handles the scheduling of the processes that need dealt with all have an effect on it.

A cpu works a bit like a person does. If you have just one or two things to do it can help to tackle them at the same time moving between one and the other and doing things in the order that makes most sense. If you have one thing to do you can focus all your energy/attention on that task. If someone gives you 15 jobs to do you can either tackle one at a time and finish each job independently faster or do a little of all 15 jobs switching back and forth making steady progress but the tasks will take more time to complete all together.

 

[L0stChild]

insane bus speed to cpu ratio + mass multiple processes?

on another thought.. sometimes ppl think its the cpu thats slow but it actually the ram.

ram and cpu needs to be in sync. general rule is its better to over feed the cpu than under. for example fsb:dram ratio 1:10 which is what im running