cpus?

[skateis2s]

hello, can someone please explain to me like exactly how cpus work in a simple term, and the FSB is the speed between the chipsets and cpu right? and the cpu speed is how fast it performs its calculations right? can someone just explain how they work and the terms, that would be awesome, thanks!!!

 

[pspada]

CPU speed (though not necessarily performance) is measured in Megahertz, which is basically how many millions of operations per clockcycle that CPU can perform. There are numerous other factors that come into play to deteremine the chips' actual performance like the size of the cache (which increases the speed of math operations), and the fsb (front side bus) speed, which is indeed just between the CPU and the chipset. the faster the fsb, the better the performance, assuming you don't have to leave the front side bus for an operation. So while you may be speeding down the fsb at 400Mhz, when you leave the fsb to go to, say, the PCI bus running at 33Mhz, that speed is going to drop down to whatever that bus can handle. It's usually best to run the fsb at a 1:1 ratio with the CPU, as is the case for the Athlon XP 3200+, but most XP chips run at the slower 333Mhz or the original 266Mhz DDR speed. If you've got a 2800+, and PC3200, at stock you'd be running at a 4:5 ratio. Thus is overclocking born, where you'd change the chips running parameters to increase the fsb speed or multiplier. perhaps to get to that 1:1 ratio. But these days, in most cases, this does not have any effect on the speed of the other buses, at least on nForce2 mobos, which lock the PCI speed at 33Mhz.

This is a simplification, of course, but should give you the general idea.