Fred said:
Could someone please explain or show me a site where I can learn the whats
and whys of the motherboard specs? I need to know what the FSB on the bord
does, and isn't there FSB on the memory too? Also what is SATA and RAID for?
I want these things to make sense to me.
FSB is a timing supplied by the motherboard to run the CPU. The CPU will
run at some multiple of the FSB speed. For example, an AMD Athlon XP 2700+
runs at 13 X 166MHz. (it's real clock speed is about 2160MHz, 2700 is a
speed rating) In that case, 13 is your multiplier and 166 (sometimes
referred to as 333, as that's the memory that best matches it) is the FSB.
The memory has it's own clock which is usually referenced to the CPU clock
in some manner, but it CAN (and should) run at the same frequency as the CPU
speed before multiplier is applied. Thus, if your system uses the Athlon XP
2700 with 166MHz, then you should use DDR333 RAM with it. (2 X 166 = about
333) You CAN use higher frequency memory also, if you want to, but there is
no performance gain in doing so. In fact, if you run DDR400 AT 200MHz (for
example) with a 166MHz processor, your benchmark numbers will actually drop
as your CPU and RAM are running asynchronously (at different speeds). But
you can get away with doing this, as most motherboards are flexible enough
to allow you to use any supported CPU with any supported RAM.
SATA is Serial ATA. It's a new interface for disk drives, replacing IDE.
You shouldn't need to worry about this unless you intend to buy a SATA
drive. If so, then your motherboard should have a SATA controller on it.
It might not be a bad idea to get a motherboard with SATA anyway, as you
never know what you might want to throw on it in the future.
RAID is running two disk drives at the same time. There are two reasons to
do this. You can use one to mirror the other (for an instantaneous backup
of everything) or you can use them as one drive (working together) for a
speed increase. But it requires two hard drives that are roughly identical
to each other. If you've never found a need for RAID in the past, you
probably don't have to worry about that for your next build. -Dave
