Hey ladies and gents. I've got a quick question if you guys have a minute.
I've been building PCs for a few years now and I've always relied on the motherboard manufacturor to tell me what kind of memory I should use with the motherboard and the processor. Consequenctly, I've never totally understood why the Memory Speed doesn't have to match the FSB speed of the CPU.
For example, I'm looking at a couple sticks of Kingston PC3200 RAM that say they have a Memory Speed (which I assume is FSB) of 400 Mhz, and an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor that says its Bus Speed is 2000 Mhz.
2000 Mhz and 400 Mhz, not the same number. There is something huge I'm missing here. I always thought FSB was the channel where the CPU and the memory communicated. Is there a multiplier or clock parameter of which I'm blatently ignorant? Does one clock down to the other? If the CPU clocks down to the memory, then what good is it to have a CPU with such a high bus speed if it's going to clock way down anyway?
These are all things floating around in my puny mind. Because, frankly, with my current knowledge of computers, I'd be frightened to throw these two together onto the same motherboard without some of you guys giving me direction.
Thank you in advance.
-Bill from IN
I've been building PCs for a few years now and I've always relied on the motherboard manufacturor to tell me what kind of memory I should use with the motherboard and the processor. Consequenctly, I've never totally understood why the Memory Speed doesn't have to match the FSB speed of the CPU.
For example, I'm looking at a couple sticks of Kingston PC3200 RAM that say they have a Memory Speed (which I assume is FSB) of 400 Mhz, and an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor that says its Bus Speed is 2000 Mhz.
2000 Mhz and 400 Mhz, not the same number. There is something huge I'm missing here. I always thought FSB was the channel where the CPU and the memory communicated. Is there a multiplier or clock parameter of which I'm blatently ignorant? Does one clock down to the other? If the CPU clocks down to the memory, then what good is it to have a CPU with such a high bus speed if it's going to clock way down anyway?
These are all things floating around in my puny mind. Because, frankly, with my current knowledge of computers, I'd be frightened to throw these two together onto the same motherboard without some of you guys giving me direction.
Thank you in advance.
-Bill from IN
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