Question about Front Side Bus (FSB) speeds

[maleko89]

I have a duo-core motherboard that supports FSB speeds of 533 mhz, 800 mhz and 1066 mhz. My CPU is rated at 800 mhz. I'm using DDR2-4200 memory which is 533 mhz.

My question is does my FSB run at both speeds or must it "dumb" down the CPU to the lowest speed? Also, if I were to get DDR2-PC5400 rated at 667 mhz what speed would the FSB be? 667 or would it drop it down to the 533 to align with FSB motherboard rating? PC6400 is 800mhz, how much difference would I notice?

TIA,

 

[Dreamster66]

wow....wish I could help you out Mark, but I'm not familar with dual core motherboards.
I'm sure theres a pc tech on here somewhere tho.
Try putting some of that info into google and see what you get.
ex...front side bus dual core motherboard.
I've had luck like that sometimes.
Randy

 

[Calimus]

FSB should be the speed that the mother board is interfacing with the processor itself. An also how quickly the information can be carried to and from the different devices like video cards, hard drives, cd-rom etc..

Your memory's (ram) speed is the speed it which it can manipulate the data being sent to and from it.

Your memory and processor bus speeds are independent of eachother. Keep in mind that your processor handles requests from all the other devices in the system at the same time as moving things in and out of the ram, so the processor bus speed doesn't lock at the memories speed. The CPU isn't always running full tilt either. it's speed is changing to match the needs of the system as a whole.

By moving up to the higher speed memory, there will be an increase, but chances are, you may not see it physicly. If you are crunching large video files, doing data mining, or playing some super intense games, you might see some, though minor improvement.

Are you having some issues that you think is caused by the different or just morbid curiosity?

 

[maleko89]

Calimus, thanks for the explanation. I'm mostly just curious. I was reading my motherboard specs and was curious at what determined the FSB speed. I would have figured the FSB would be 533 since that's what my memory is, i'm glad that the memory and CPU speed are separate.

I can have dual channel memory but I'm only running one slot with 1Gbyte of DDR2-4200 and was pricing another stick of the 4200. I also noticed that I can run DDR2-5400 or 6400 so started researching those. I noticed that there are more choices and better sale prices of DDR2-5400 and DDR-6400 but not sure if it's worth it to upgrade to the higher DDR2.

I do play Battlefield 2142 and it uses almost 1 Gig of memory. I have to close some processes down to play it. I would've thought 1 gig was a lot, but I guess not anymore. I recently built this computer to replace my 1.2 Ghz Celeron with 384 MB of memory...what a difference!

 

[82ndCowboy]

I used to do tech support, but that was about 3 years ago. I don't have any exspirience with the new dual core stuff either. But what I remember is older MB FSB usually have a setting in the bios that allows you to set the speed according to your processor's speed. But they usually auto detect the max speed and set it accordingly. And it also depends on the MB and the BIOS as weather or not it has that option.

 

[clintard]

Mark,

I play 2142 as well and believe me the faster memory plus more of it will help tremendously with your framerate in the game. If you can afford it go for it (higher framerates make the games a whole lot funner, at least for me.) What video card do you have now? I have a geforce 5900fx and i can barely play that game right now. Will definitely be upgrading soon. Heres a link i think will help you out quite a bit. Devhardware is by far the best forum for computer related inquiries on the net. You can learn a ton on there.

http://www.devhardware.com/forums/

Peace

 

[maleko89]

I have this video card: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=H231-7044
It's a 256 MB PCI express card. Supposedly, only four of the channels are unlocked. How do I unlock the other 4?

 

[Buster Hymen]

Calimus, thanks for the explanation. I'm mostly just curious. I was reading my motherboard specs and was curious at what determined the FSB speed. I would have figured the FSB would be 533 since that's what my memory is, i'm glad that the memory and CPU speed are separate.

I can have dual channel memory but I'm only running one slot with 1Gbyte of DDR2-4200 and was pricing another stick of the 4200. I also noticed that I can run DDR2-5400 or 6400 so started researching those. I noticed that there are more choices and better sale prices of DDR2-5400 and DDR-6400 but not sure if it's worth it to upgrade to the higher DDR2.

I do play Battlefield 2142 and it uses almost 1 Gig of memory. I have to close some processes down to play it. I would've thought 1 gig was a lot, but I guess not anymore. I recently built this computer to replace my 1.2 Ghz Celeron with 384 MB of memory...what a difference!

1 Gig of memory to play that game! Guess I won't be able to play that one my laptop.