FSB Question

[bhath19]

Can someone explain to me what Front Side Bus (fbs) actually means, for example, i bought the following MoBo and processor:

* Gigabyte GA-7DXE, S.462, 200/266FSB, Audio, DDR200/266
* AMD Athlon™ XP 2200+ 384K 266FSB OEM

What does the FSB mean in this ?

[tmx468]

The motherboard (Gigabyte) is capable of taking processors running at a FSB of 200 or 266Mhz. THe CPU (Athlon) is a 266Mhz FSB processor.

Is that ok, or do you want a further explanation about the FSB?

[bhath19]

If you could, I would like a detailed explanation. Trying to learn

[win2kuser]

Well, the way I see it...

Bus is a communication channel.

The Front Side Bus is the communication channel between the cpu, ram and AGP.

It uses MHz or millions of cycles per second.

266MHz FSB is 266 million cycles per second.

Most computer now use multiples of 133 - 2x133 = 266.

It is best to tie the mobo, cpu etc to the same fsb setting i.e. 266.

AGP is default at 66MHz - 2xAGP = 133 and 4xAGP = 266

Ram works in the same way, i.e. multiples of 66MHz or 133MHz.

Newer cpu's and mobos use 400MHz or multiples of 200MHz

Other than that, I'm not sure what you want to know, but hope that helps...

[Zenara25]

I'll go in between basic and in-depth.
In parts. First the motherboard/cpu FSB: Gigabyte GA-7DXE, S.462, 200/266FSB. This determines what CPU will work with your motherboard. For your board there are those that run at 200 (I believe starting with the Athlon 900 up to Athlon 1.4) and those that run at 266 (Athlon 1Ghz up to 2.4Ghz)(But to be absolutely sure I recommend always going to the motherboards manufacturer site to find out what CPU's will work.)

Then theres the Memory DDR200/266: For your motherboard there are 2 kinds of memory that will work. The 200 represents PC1600 memory. The 266 is PC2100. You can get it in 128MB,256MB,512MB and maybe more for your motherboard. I recommend going to www.crucial.com or the kingston website.

To have the best performance it is important to try to make sure the CPU FSB and the Memory FSB are the same.

Also you may have to move jumpers on the motherboard to set the cpu and memory fsb.

Hope that helps.