front side bus
FSB
<hardware> (FSB) The {bus} via which a {processor}
communicates with its {RAM} and {chipset}; one half of the
{Dual Independent Bus}, the other half being the {backside
bus}. The {L2 cache} is usually on the FSB, unless it is on
the same chip as the processor [example?].
In {PCI} systems, the PCI bus runs at half the FSB speed.
{Intel}'s {Pentium 60} processor used a bus speed and
processor speed of 60 {MHz}. All later processors have used
multipliers to increase the internal {clock} speed while
maintaining the same external clock speed, e.g. the {Pentium
90} used a 1.5x multiplier. Modern {Socket 370}
{motherboards} support multipliers from 4.5x to 8.0x, and FSB
speeds from 50 MHz to a proposed 83 MHz standard. These
higher speeds may cause problems with some PCI hardware.
Altering the FSB speed and the multiplier ratio are the two
main ways of {overclocking} processors.
Toms Hardware - The Bus Speed Guide
(http://tomshardware.com/busspeed.html).
Toms Hardware - The Overclocking Guide
(http://tomshardware.com/overclock.html).
(2002-02-21)