200/266MHz FSB processors

[JobieOne]

Hi can anyone help. I have no idea what FSB is, or the sizes???. My friend is telling me that I will have to upgrade my motherboard very soon. I have a gigabyte motherboard that supports upto DDR266 DDR memory. Is he just telling me fibs, or will I have to upgrade soon?.

Help will be very much appreciated.

JobieOne

:confused:

[vee_ess]

FSB is the Front Side Bus, the part of the motherboard that connects everything together. It coordinates communication between the processor, RAM, add-in cards (video card, sound card, etc.), hard drives and anything else that your computer uses. Generally, faster FSB's make a big impact on overall performance.

Now, about having to upgrade it very soon, that depends on what you plan on doing with your computer. If your system is fast enough for you and you don't plan on upgrading at all, you have no reason to upgrade. If you want any of the latest processors or RAM, and your motherboard doesn't support it, then you may have to upgrade.

[Uranium-235]

FSB is the Front Side Bus, the part of the motherboard that connects everything together. It coordinates communication between the processor, RAM, add-in cards (video card, sound card, etc.), hard drives and anything else that your computer uses. Generally, faster FSB's make a big impact on overall performance.

uhhh, wrong. the FSB just connects the CPU and Memory. The southbridge is what connects IDE, PCI, USB and other stuff (most of the time anyways). Some Motherboard architectures just have a northbridge to connect eveything (like SiS735).

...

[Prometheus]

Basically

The Fsb is the thing that comunicates between the ram and the cpu

The faster your processor and FSB together (and at least 512 ram)

The faster information is passed between the two

[eviltechie]

heres my technical view on the FSB
ok... lets all take a look at the von neuman architecture which all modern computers are based on

the CPU is mainly made up of a lot of circuitry and a main bus interface
it is that bus interface which allows the communications of CPU to other devices
and since a lot of the connections are bi-directional, they will require tri-state buffers to control whether which sides are input/ouput
so it is how fast it switches between the states that makes it the front side bus

therefore, the faster the better as more data can be sent in an amount of time

[awrobinsonii]

Okay people you all are right but not very detailed explainations. The picture was nice. Okay you have Northbridge and southbridge and they are exactly that bridges. But the traces the little silver lines or what ever color on your board, the little fine lines that run from the CPU, Ram, North and Southbridges, and PCI slots, the speed at which the data transfers on these lines is considered the FSB measured in mhz. "The speed at which data moves on these traces is what is defined by the FSB 60, 66, 100, 133, 266, 333, 400, 800" and there you have it.

[vee_ess]

Crap!!!! I don't know what I was thinking! Well, I do; for some reason I was thinking of the Northbridge when I typed that. Thanks Uranium, for catching me on that.