Front Side Bus?
- Thread starter cobol
- Start date
IIRC the Front Side Bus is the part of the processor which interacts with the rest of the hardware in the PC.
EDIT: As with most things on a PC, the higher the number usually means the better it is so i im agine it applies here
EDIT: As with most things on a PC, the higher the number usually means the better it is so i im agine it applies here
Always worth checking out the best site for these kind of initial question 
Here ... http://computer.howstuffworks.com/motherboard1.htm
Not detailed, but shoudl explain it to you.
Here ... http://computer.howstuffworks.com/motherboard1.htm
Not detailed, but shoudl explain it to you.
The Front Side Bus or FSB as it's usually referred to is actually on the motherboard. It is the primary bus on the motherboard that links together many of the more important components of any computer. The CPU, memory, graphics and so on are all connected through this bus.
Basically the speed of the bus determines how fast each of the components can talk to one another. That's why the speed of the memory and the cpu must both be related by a divider to the speed of the FSB. The best value for this divider is 1:1 as that means the memory and cpu can speak to eachother at the same speed. In a lot of cases though the speed must be different so a different ratio between CPU and memory must be used. This doesn't result in a massive loss of performance but a slight loss nonetheless.
You'll see a lot of overclocks requiring varying ratios. For example my current overclock is running on a 5:4 ratio which means my cpu is running at the FSB of 266 and my memory is running at 212.
The CPU then takes its FSB of 266 and applies its own multiplier to get its speed. This multiplier is generally locked but on high end chips it is sometimes unlocked to give overclockers another tool with which to optimise their performance. The multiplier on my E6300 for example is locked at 7x. This means that my current CPU speed is 1862mhz.
btw the reason I have it currently running at stock speeds was to try and improve the stability of my seemingly damaged RAM. It didn't so I'll now set my FSB to 300, my CPU/Mem ratio to 8:5 and hopefully be just as stable as I am now
Basically the speed of the bus determines how fast each of the components can talk to one another. That's why the speed of the memory and the cpu must both be related by a divider to the speed of the FSB. The best value for this divider is 1:1 as that means the memory and cpu can speak to eachother at the same speed. In a lot of cases though the speed must be different so a different ratio between CPU and memory must be used. This doesn't result in a massive loss of performance but a slight loss nonetheless.
You'll see a lot of overclocks requiring varying ratios. For example my current overclock is running on a 5:4 ratio which means my cpu is running at the FSB of 266 and my memory is running at 212.
The CPU then takes its FSB of 266 and applies its own multiplier to get its speed. This multiplier is generally locked but on high end chips it is sometimes unlocked to give overclockers another tool with which to optimise their performance. The multiplier on my E6300 for example is locked at 7x. This means that my current CPU speed is 1862mhz.
btw the reason I have it currently running at stock speeds was to try and improve the stability of my seemingly damaged RAM. It didn't so I'll now set my FSB to 300, my CPU/Mem ratio to 8:5 and hopefully be just as stable as I am now