RAM, CPU bus/fsb and Mother Board Bus?

Question

How do they all relate? And how do I get the most out of my machine? Also if I mix DDR 266 and DDR 333 ram on this machine wil I loose performance.

Processor:

NameAMD Athlon XP
CodenamePalomino
SpecificationAMD Athlon(tm) XP 1700+
PackageSocket A (462)
CPUID6.6.2
Core SteppingA5
Core Speed1467.1 MHz (11.0 x 133.4 MHz)
Rated Bus speed266.7 MHz

Mainboard ModelVT8367-8233A (KX7-333[R])

DIMMS (2)

General
Memory typeDDR
Size512 MBytes
Max bandwidthPC3200 (200 MHz)
1 day ago - 2 days left to answer.

Answer 1

1st: The motherboard bus, by this do you mean the main bus?
The main bus has all conncections from other buses flowing into it, think of it as the main river and all the little creaks, rivers, and streams flowing into the big Mississipi. Except the flow goes both ways.

2nd: FSB - Front Side Bus - this is realy a timing bus that controls the memory and cpu clock speed, it is a special circit that contians the crystial and special support IC's to maintain the clock speed. This timing circut can be tapped by other buses to control thier speed but can not request a change of the FSB speed. You can however change this speed if the control circuit is accesable through hardware jumpers or Software, such as the BIOS Settings.

3rd: If you mix ram with different FSB speeds the system will either not start, function erraticly or even burn up the slower ram.

HTH

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Answer 2

The only way they relate, is that they are all parts of the same machine, changing one will not affect the other but could affect the machine as a whole.
Same as, on a car, changing the tyres, doesn't affect the engine but could make it safer or more comfortable.

To get the most from the machine (I'm assuming you have windows) ideally re-install windows and everything will run nicely, if that's too much, stop all the garbage from running at startup (toolbars for IE, office startup, acrobat startup, i-tunes helper etc) Run a few virus checks, spyware checks and a hard disk defrag. They shoul all help a bit.

Assuming your MB runs 333mhz ram currently, adding 266mhz ram will either cause all the memory to run at 266 or it won't work at all. More ram is always a good idea but try to get matching speeds if you can

Answer 3

the three are all dependent on each other.

time for an anaolgy!!! lets pretend that your mobo speed is a car, your ram is your house, and your cpu is the bank. your ram houses all your temporary information while your computer is on. when something needs to be done, it transfers information (lets pretend that info is you) to the processor to be processed (the bank). the motherboard is the car, the slower it is, the slower you will get to the bank (the processor) and the faster it is, the faster you will get to the bank. the bank or the processor will take the information and process it. lets say you wanted to withdraw money. Pretend the cpu speed is the bank teller. if the bank teller (cpu speed) is slow, then it will take much longer for you to withdraw money. if the teller is faster, then you will get your money faster. so the faster you can find the info from the ram, the faster you can get it to the processor, and the faster you can process it, the better. dual core processors are also better. for dual core processors, pretend that instead of 1 bank teller, there are 2 helping you.

now how are all these related?

ram size:
your computer will "look" inside the ram to find the data it needs. if everything is cramped, it will take much longer to find it. if everything is loose and laying around, it will be easier and faster to find.
the cpu speed:
when processing, if your ram is too slow and your cpu speed to fast, it can sometimes leave the cpu idleing while waiting for your ram to dish out info, thus losing performance, which is why ram speed needs to be optimized to send out info consistently and quickly.
the mobo speed:
im pretty sure this is how long it will take to get info to and from your processor.

if you mix two differend types of ram, depending on your motherboard, the lesser of the two speeds will be used. for example, say you used DDR 266 and DDR 333. the motherboard will used the DDR 333 ram at DDR 266 speed, so its kinda a waste of money.

you usually dont have to worry too much about the processor. the Core steppings are just revisions to it to make it better, such as production of less heat and less voltage draining. the core speed just determines your total cpu speed and you should only worry about if you're overclocking.

to get the most out of your machine, you need to make sure that the info is not getting choked when coming from your ram to processor and that your processor is running hand in hand with your ram.

Answer 4

The Radeon HD 6870 performs in basic terms as stable simply by fact the GTX 560 Ti, and it quite is much less funds, get that instead. The x4 955 performs on par with an i3 2100. Wait an afternoon, AMD's Bulldozer is rumored to be out the next day, or a minimum of contained in here couple of days (Mid October) and curiously in basic terms like the fx 4100 processor (3.6 ghz, 4 cores, 32 nm) is on pre order at some cyber web web pages for around the equivalent fee as a 955/965. in case you want Bulldozer, you want an AM3+ motherboard. As already stated, the Caviar Black drives are ridiculously overpriced.