Some info on bus speeds??

[mgicash]

Hey guys,

I am not new to computers, and I have quite a bit of experience with them, but I was just looking for some advice and expertise from some other professionals such as yourselves. I am going to be working all summer long so that I can make enought money to buy a new computer. I will be building it from scratch and have a few questions for yall. I cant decide on what motherboard to get, and I was hoping yall could help. I am definitely getting a P4 2.2 Ghz processor, and PC2700 DDR-RAM however on the motherboard, I have a few questions. The motherboard I am looking at is the newest one right now from Asus. It is the Asus P4S533 motherboard. You can see it on the following site:

http://www.asus.com.tw/mb/socket478/p4s533/overview.htm

It has a 533 Mhz FSB and supports PC2700 Ram. I am not too familiar with front side bus settings, and basically anything to do with bus speeds, etc. Could someone give me a little info on if my processor would be a good combination with this motherboard. Can anyone tell me more about bus speeds, etc.? I think that P4's run at 400 Mhz bus speed, so would this mobo at 533 be compatible with the 2.2 ghz processor? Thanks for all yall's help.

mgicash

 

[gavrc]

The problem at the moment is that the P4 indeed runs at 400MHZ but even PC2700 DDR runs at 166MHz (double clocked to 333). This means CPU and memory buses while blisteringly fast, are not entirely synchronised. The only RAM that runs at the same clock speed as the P4 is still RAMBUS RD-RAM. This has other drawbacks, but in (most) benchmarks will come out top.
Regarding FSB speeds, your mobo will allow you to play with the ratio of FSB to memory bus. eg FSB=100MHz and RAM=166MHz, ie 1:3.5 ratio. This gets the most out of the RAM without overclocking the PCI or AGP buses.
All in all you should have fun with your current setup with lots of opportunity to overclock the RAM on its own (if you so desire!)

Gav
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