l2 cache: level 2 cache, quickswap memory that is built into the CPU.

l3 cache: level 3 cache, slightly larger capacity, slower, but cheap to make memory that’s also built into your cpu.

virtualization: umm… this one’s hard to explain. something like… faking your hardware… like, check out vmware to know what i’m talking about.

operating frequency: not a measure of raw processing power. just the speed at which the cpu oscillates.

hypertransport: if i remember correctly, this means that it’s an amd cpu, and hypertransport is the connections between the cpu and the ram?

spot on! the CPU stores the most often used pieces of information so it doesn’t have to crunch them again….
i think that it fills up the ram by the order of priority or usage. l2 i know is faster than l3 ram, but since they’re both so close in physical proximity to the CPU, they’re many times faster than the normal ram you have in your computer.

there aren’t really any advantages to 64 bit over 32… anyway. modern cpus have all switched to 32 bit.

gflops is the amount of numbers crunched by the cpu. soon it’ll be tflops (teraflops)
ghz is the speed at which the cpu oscillates.

CPUs don’t have onboard graphics controllers. it’s separate (fun fact: the junk graphics cards they have built into the motherboards are actually more powerful than the CPU… check out GPGPUs to know what i mean)

no cpu has an onboard graphics card. bad computers don’t necessarily have bad graphics card… like for me, if i were inclined to build a cheap computer right now for no reason at all, i’d probably give it a mainstream graphics card.

1) Operating freqeuncy is the measure of raw processing power right? As in the number of operation it can perform in a second. A 1ghz cpu can perform 1 billion operations per second right?
Almost. Refers to the number of operations that can be performed in a PC cycle. Each cycle is 1/60th of a second (determined by the frequency by which electricity reverses currents in an AC charge). However that number is deceptive because some operations take multiple "operations", plus about 70% of the average processors time is spend waiting for information to reach it. So a 1ghz does not actual do 1 billion operations per cycle. That is just is maximum, not its norm.

2) Hyper Transport determine how fast the CPU is able to communicate with other items on the system board. Hyper Transport is one of several different methods that can be used.

3) Cache is memory where instructions are held, waiting for the CPU to be ready for them. L1 (level 1) is located right on the processor and is the quickest for the CPU to access. Commands that are currently to in use are stored there. L2 is located "by" the processor and holds commands and information that the CPU anticipates it will need. If the program makes a "jump" in its processing (moves to a different part of the code or data), the L2 information will be useless and new information will need to be loaded. L3 is memory that is "behind" the L2 and holds data and instructions that are less likely than L2 to be used.

4) Because the majority of PCs are still 32 bit, there is not much on the market yet that makes use of the power of 64 bit. However, as the number grows, so will the true 64 bit programs. They will be able to use more complex commands (2^64 in length), transfer twice as much into memory at the same time, and run commands that 32 bit processor can not. They will be faster than 32 bit processors.

5) Virtualization refers to the ability to run one OS inside of another, or multiple versions of the same OS at the same time. For example, Win7 Ultimate includes a version of XP that can be run "inside" of Win7. It makes your PC look and act like XP and can run all XP programs within that "virtual" version of XP. It is also used on servers where they can be set up to run several servers on one PC. Remember that the average processor is only busy about 30% of the time. So you could run three "virtual" computers on one processor, each use 1/3 of the processing time. To anyone looking at the computer, it would appear that you have three different computers running, when it is really three different "virtual" PCs on one computer.

6) GFLOPS: FLOPS are the number of Floating points operations a CPU can do per second. Remember that I said different operations take different length of times? One way to get a more accurate number is to only consider one type of operation. Probably the most common in a computer is floating point. So if you count only the floating point operations, you are comparing apples to apples. Because processor have become so fast that counting "per second" would be a huge number (1 billion FLOPS), they count by GigaFLOPS (GFLOPS) instead.

7) Usually the quality of an image is determined more by the quality of the graphic card than the speed of the processor. In fact, most graphic cards have their own processor and memory. So if "A" give you a better picture than "B", then "A" probably has a better graphic card

Not all system boards have build in video. Most do because it is usually cheaper to integrate a video chip into the system board than to purchase an external card for each PC. Often the quality of the on board video is equal to what you would get on an external card. However system boards may stay in produce for a couple years. Video technology will probably improve during that time, so that by the end of its life, it is a "crappy" video chip. Also most boards come with an option for a low end, medium or high end chip. You get what you pay for.