What is Front Side Bus (FSB)

[Acoshi]

I understand the idea of the Bus speed and all but I still having trouble understanding what the FSB is and does for the computer. I see it constantly when I'm looking up motherboards

 

[Slappy00]

The Skinny

The bus via which a processor communicates with its RAM and chipset; one half of the Dual Independent Bus, the other half being the backside bus. The L2 cache is usually on the FSB, unless it is on the same chip as the processor.

for more info

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/19980101/index.html

 

[fredtam]

It links the cpu to the memory. It is basically a pipe for information. Think of it like your internet connection. The larger the FSB the more data that can be put through it.

 

[Acoshi]

Thanks

 

[Viper96720]

Pathway for stuff to travel from cpu, memory, video, etc... Seen somewhere someones trying to use light to transfer the data. Not sure if it was Intel or not. That would make a
computer super fast. Then you might say my fsb is the speed of light

 

[fredtam]

Originally posted by: Slappy00
The Skinny

The bus via which a processor communicates with its RAM and chipset; one half of the Dual Independent Bus, the other half being the backside bus. The L2 cache is usually on the FSB, unless it is on the same chip as the processor.

for more info

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/19980101/index.html

I wasn't going to hit him with supertechnical explanation. Its only his second post and given the nature of his question we might want to bring him up to speed slowly. I hope he doesn't see any reviews while at TH. He doesn't know they smoke crack while writing them.

 

[AndyHui]

That definition at TH is way out of date.

The FSB is now simply the pathway from the processor to the motherboard chipset.

 

[randumb]

This should go in the FAQ.