BleepingComputer.com: Dont understand Fsb

Few questions, in tigerdirect im looking at motherboards and on the discription it says


- Front Side Bus: 800/1066/1366MHz

does that mean that those are the FSB's supported when u put the processor in? i dont get it

and does the FSB come from the motherboard or the processor?

and 1 more thing

what is the purpose of FSB?

This post has been edited by chrisgritz: 18 November 2008 - 09:28 PM

The front side bus (FSB) connects the CPU to the northbridge (memory controller) and the rest of the PC. A CPU's speed is determined by the FSB and the CPU multiplier. Generally, if a motherboard can support a certain socket it has the appropriate FSB speeds to run the processor. The normal user does not have to worry about the FSB, only overclockers. Builders, to a slightly smaller extent, have to consider FSB.

Ahhhh, i was just wondering cuz ppl tell me that FSB is a main thing when building a comp, and my friend gave me a comp and its running at 3.33 Ghz single processor but only has like 533 Mhz fsb and it runs pretty slow, it runs slower then my other comp and my other comp has 2.8 Ghz, its a single also not sure the FSB though. Also this comp only has 1gb of ram 2 x 512 400mhz a piece so im not sure why is it slow, cuz of the fsb or the ram, btw if a ram says 1gb at 800 mhz does the mhz on the ram make it faster?

Remember, some CPU's are single core and some are two or more cores. If the 3.33 GHz was single core, it will be slower than 2.8 GHz dual core in many applications. If you were to put 800 MHz RAM into a PC that was rated for 400 MHz, the new RAM would downclock to 400 MHz. Also, if you mix RAM of varying speeds together, the RAM with the lowest speed will be used. RAM can downclock themselves, but not overclock without user intervention. However, you are limited to the speed of the motherboard.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ok ok i got it now really helped once agian, Thanks alot!

This post has been edited by chrisgritz: 18 November 2008 - 10:42 PM

The FSB determines how fast data can be sent to your CPU core. The core speed shows how fast things are processed by the core.