Determining an Appropriate FSB speed?

Question

Hello all,

Well, basically a total PC-noob here. I was researching a bit about computer hardware since I'm thinking of splashing out on a new PC. I've read about bottlenecks to performance, and that the Front Side Bus could be one of these due it being a bridge for data to the CPU.

Basically, I'm wondering if there's some way to work out the appropriate FSB speed for a computer? I'm looking at a Q6600 (i.e. 2.4Ghz, 8mb cache and 1066Mhz FSB), but is there some kind of principle or arithmetic or whatever used to work out what the appropriate specs of the FSB (or even other components of the computer) should be?

Answer 1

In this case, just make sure the motherboard's FSB supports (i.e., greater or equal to) the CPU's FSB speed.

To figure out the minimum speed for your RAM, we'll need to calculate the base clock frequency of the FSB.  Intel quad-pumps the FSB, so in this case, the base clock freq. would be 1066 / 4 = 266 MHz.

Since DDR2 is double-pumped, you would want at least dual channel DDR2-533 (533 = 266 x 2) in order to match the FSB.

Answer 2

this free diagnostic program may tell you

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

remember its cat and mouse

it used to be that people bought high end rambus ram ( 800 mhz) only to find out years later that it was all window dressing - the bus speed limit was 100 mhz

now they give you for sales and marketing tremendous front side bus speeds but bottleneck you somewhere else

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

a little knowledge is a dangerous thing