north and southbridge??? wtf???

[Giraffe]

first of all i dont know if this should be in cpu or m/b so i put it here
i get everything about the cpu's except what north and southbridge is?
can sum1 plz explain
thx in advance

 

[Haggard]

It's like.... eh.... a chip that does something
Not sure though 8O

 

[m25]

first of all i dont know if this should be in cpu or m/b so i put it here
i get everything about the cpu's except what north and southbridge is?
can sum1 plz explain
thx in advance

These are the 2 main chips of the motherboard which control memory, grapgics, I/O etc.

for more details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northbridge_(computing)

 

[Giraffe]

thx

 

[YO_KID37]

first of all i dont know if this should be in cpu or m/b so i put it here
i get everything about the cpu's except what north and southbridge is?
can sum1 plz explain
thx in advance

They are PCI Bus Controllers. The Northbridge Countrolls the RAM and the PCI Slots and the CPU and directly controls the Southbridge too. And the soouthbridge is lika slave controller of the northbridge. given the job of countrolling anyother slots on the motherboard. I think it mainly deals with AGP and others

 

[Lord-Ilpolazzo]

A big logic/switching device that lets the cpu address various things wihout need for an insane number of pins to support all the interfaces.. i think it sort of multiplexes the various busse (agp. pci, etc)

 

[spontayo]

first of all i dont know if this should be in cpu or m/b so i put it here
i get everything about the cpu's except what north and southbridge is?
can sum1 plz explain
thx in advance

They are PCI Bus Controllers. The Northbridge Countrolls the RAM and the PCI Slots and the CPU and directly controls the Southbridge too. And the soouthbridge is lika slave controller of the northbridge. given the job of countrolling anyother slots on the motherboard. I think it mainly deals with AGP and others

The Northbridge only controls the memory on intel motherboards, and older socket A motherboards. Socket 754 and 939 systems have a memory controller built into the cpu.

 

[chunkymonster]

first of all i dont know if this should be in cpu or m/b so i put it here
i get everything about the cpu's except what north and southbridge is?
can sum1 plz explain
thx in advance

Typically, with AMD Skt A and older boards as well as all Intel boards, the northbridge chip controls the data flow/communication between the processor, memory, and video card; the northbridge also has a communication bridge/link to the southbridge. Typically, the southbridge chip controls the data flow/communication between the PCI slots, USB, firewire, KB & M, and other peripheral devices.

With the newer AMD boards (Skt 754, 939, 940, etc...), because of the onboard memory controller, there is only need for one chip to handle all things I/O and any peripheral devices.

Check out some mobo manufacturer sites and dl some of the manuals for boards you're interested in. The manuals usually have a block diagram of the chipset and you can see the data flow and how each chip/component communicates across the mobo.

Good luck!