How To Check Your CPU Speed On A Windows PC

One often overlooked component of any great gaming PC is the CPU. While shiny new graphics cards get all the attention, the CPU is just as important, as it determines how fast your computer is. Granted, it is not the only metric for computing speed, and different games use the processing unit differently. Turn-based strategy titles like "Sid Meier's Civilization," for instance, are far heavier on the CPU than, say, a first-person shooter.

When one talks about CPU speed, the term more often than not refers to clock speed. That is the number of cycles a processor can conduct tasks with, per second, and is typically measured in gigahertz (GHz). But clock speed is not the only measure of how powerful a CPU is. There is also the number of cores present, as well as cache size, that indicate the power of a CPU (and when it might be time to upgrade).

Before you start looking at a replacement, you might want to see how fast your current CPU is with this handy guide.

To check the clock speed of your CPU, you need to:

1. Click on the Start menu icon.

2. Search for System Information.

3. Look for Processor. The number next to GHz is your clock speed.

Additionally, you can check the exact processing speed at any given time, to see how much of your processing power a given program is using. To do so:

1. Open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc.

2. Switch to the Performance tab.

3. Under CPU, look for the metric measuring Speed. Again, this is measured in GHz.

That will give you the speed of your CPU, which you can use to measure your PC up against requirements for games and other programs. As mentioned, there's more to your processing power than just the speed. Still, this is a good measurement of how powerful your CPU is. If you want to make your CPU run better or faster — before thinking of replacing it altogether – you can check this guide.