Please Confirm

This is extracted from A+ Certification For Dummies 3rd edition:

At least 10 percent of the A+Hardware Technology exam is comprised of questions about processors, their characteristics, and their compatibilities. For each popular CPU (starting with the Pentium chip), you need to know its general characteristics---including physical size, voltage, caching abilities, and the socket or slot that it uses to mount to the motherboard---as well as details such as the number of pins on its packaging.

You need to memorize a bit in the CPU content area. The good news is that the processors before the Pentium and its clones have been eliminated from the exams. You don't need to worry about when the math coprocessor was integrated into the CPU or the data bus width of the 286 or 486 chip.

I was hoping to get confirmation on its accuracy. Specifically it saying all pre-Pentium processors were taking out of the exam. I also noticed it saying you need to memorize the number of pins, but in the Technotes on this site it says you don't. Whatcha think?

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Comments

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True, you prolly won't have to know the older processors (486, etc) but I would know modern day and some older ones as well, like Pentium 2. I had several questions on processors in my exam.

luCiD

Sweet, thanks for the info man

Would you say you need to memorize physical size, voltage, caching abilities, and the socket or slot that it uses to mount to the motherboard---as well as details such as the number of pins on its packaging.

So does the exam mostly focus on modern hardware? How far back into legacy stuff should I study in the different domains. Sorry if that's a big question, I am just getting conflicting stuff from all the various material I have.

For instance should I exclude bus architectures as old or older than ISA from my studying and focus on ones like PCI-Express?