FSB 200/266/333/400

[TonTon]

Are these actual speeds or are they like the pentium boards that are doing more per cycle. And does that mean if let's say I had an AMD 1.4 tbird and I wanted to get a new mobo that was let's say a VIA kt400 would the afore mentioned cpu run on that board. Does the board adjust to suit the cpu? Any other explanatory (?sp) information you can provide would be great. I'm trying to help someone else out with the purchase of a new mobo but not a new cpu. I know that's not the best scenario but that's what he wants to do right now. He killed his board so needs to replace it. I'm only asking here 'cause he, of course, can't access the web with no 'puter.

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[rebturtle]

Okay, here's how it goes in as close to layman's terms as I can get it: The FSB rating is somewhat like the pentium boards, as you said. Depending on the processor (Duron, Athlon, Athlon XP, Claw Hammer), the chip will run at a set frequency i.e. 100,133,166,200 MHz. Since AMD chips can process info "coming and going" at the same time, the speeds they rate them at are doubled. Thus, you get 200,266,333,400 MHz, even though the BIOS may only say half that. Still with me?
As for the physical fit of the chip, currently you can still fit literally any AMD K7 (Duron/Athlon/Athlon XP) processor into any AMD K7 board. Thus your T-bird will run in any of the newest boards.
As for the VIA board, you're gonna find that although it's a good board (I used to have one), probably 80-90% of the people on here are going to suggest the nForce boards - myself included. Don't take my word for it alone, just read through the threads on this forum, as well as Tom's articles. Good luck!


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[TonTon]

I'm definitely a nforce chipset person myself, I was just using the VIA as an example. The part that was 'a little' confusing was how they got the 400. I didn't see any info about amd's at 200 must have missed it and of course I didn't want to just assume they were a double of 200.

Thanks for the info.

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[Traqr]

AMD doesn't offer DDR400 FSB CPUs yet (maybe never, but those of us with new boards <i>are</i> holding our breath!). Currently, only memory runs at DDR400, and then only asynchronously (well, I had my Athlon 900 running DDR200 FSB with DDR400 RAM, but I digress...), so there's usually no advantage to doing so. Dig around the mainboard articles for specific application benchmarks if you really want to compare 333/400 to 333/333. If you're running an older CPU on a dual-channel nForce2, though, the penalty for asynchronous operation is likely worth taking for the increased AGP and MCP (southbridge) memory access bandwidth.

Oh, and with regard to compatibility, if you missed it I'm running an Athlon 900. I said I <i>had</i> it running 200/400 because it's more stable at 200/200 with agressive timings, and there's no performance difference. I'm also running PCI video, so there's no AGP activity on the memory subsystem (I had trouble getting that running until I upgraded the BIOS, but I guess Asus figured nobody would be dumb enough to try that on their flagship AMD board ).

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[rebturtle]

AMD XP3200 w/ 400MHz FSB. Just to show you I'm not making it up, here's the <A HREF="http://news.com.com/2100-1006-998947.html?tag=fd_top" target="_new">link</A>. nVidia wouldn't be updating the BIOS to accept it if it wasn't in the works.

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[TonTon]

Thanks for the info guys.

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