<hardware> (FSB) 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 [example?].
In PCI systems, the PCI bus runs at half the FSB speed.
Intel's Pentium 60 processor used a bus speed and
processor speed of 60 MHz. All later processors have used
multipliers to increase the internal clock speed while
maintaining the same external clock speed, e.g. the Pentium
90 used a 1.5x multiplier. Modern Socket 370
motherboards support multipliers from 4.5x to 8.0x, and FSB
speeds from 50 MHz to a proposed 83 MHz standard. These
higher speeds may cause problems with some PCI hardware.
Altering the FSB speed and the multiplier ratio are the two
main ways of overclocking processors.
Toms Hardware - The Bus Speed Guide.
Toms Hardware - The Overclocking Guide.
(2002-02-21)
Nearby terms:
Frolic « front end « front-end processor « front side bus » frotz » frotzed » frowney
