I've been asked a quite a few questions and I've seen a few threads regarding the subject matter and I thought I'd clear things up.

The FSB matter--

Every CPU has three major things that factor into a CPU's clock speed. The three things are: FSB, CPU multiplier, and voltage settings (I'm not going to talk about). To get your clock setting you have to multiply the FSB by the mulitplier eg.

166(FSB) * 10(Multiplier)=1660(Final Clock speed)

Now if you lower one of these (either the FSB or the multiplier) you in turn lower the clock speed eg.

100(FSB) * 10(Multiplier)=1000(Final Clock speed)

Now if you raise one of these that's when you overclock.


If you build your own computer you have to get a memory that is compatible with you motherboard. Lets use DDR333 for this. DDR runs at double its acutal rate which for this is 166.

I find TONS of people that think that if they have a 333mhz FSB on their processor, overclocking their memory to DDR400 (400mhz clock) makes their computer faster. This isn't true. To have a faster computer you need to keep your FSB and your memory clock the same eg.

333mhz fsb=333mhz memory.

If you want to overclock your processor through means of FSB overclock your memory too. In my case I overclocked from a 333mhz FSB to a 400mhz FSB, but I also made sure to overclock my DDR333 to DDR400 to keep the two equal.

I hope this helps people who didn't fully understand before.

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Ryan

Good post, gets the point across.

Thanks, I could always go into more detail, but that's another place and another time ;-). I'm thinking about making a "How-To Set Up Your Comp article" soon...

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Ryan

that would be a very good article- I'm sure theres tons of people out there that are interested in building their own computer but may be scared of trying it.

"I find TONS of people that think that if they have a 333mhz FSB on their processor, overclocking their memory to DDR400 (400mhz clock) makes their computer faster."

Actually... overclocking your memory does make your computer faster, at least on P4 systems. If your memory is at a high frequency, then memory accesses will be quicker, so you will notice a speed up in everything. This is called running your memory and cpu asynchronously, because their clocks aren't the same. You can run AMD systems asynchronously also, but it usually hinders more than it helps.

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Brian Nehring
Editor, SLCentral.com