Front Side Bus vs System Bus

Steve Mavronis

Steve Mavronis

New Member
My Gateway FX530 is advertised as having a 1066mhz front side bus. When I run system tests like 3DMark06 it reports a 266MHz external bus. When I boot to my Intel 975X system board BIOS it says 1066MHz system bus speed. What am I seeing here?

My CPU is a Q6600 Core 2 Quad at 2.4Ghz and have 4GB PC5300 DDR2 667MHz SDRAM memory installed.
 
Thats wierd because before I decided to get it configured with Quad Core, the price quote for a Dual Core system still said 1066Mhz FSB on it? Is it because the motherboard is just capable of 1066Mhz when a Quad is installed?
 
No, in simple terms your FSB has like 4 lanes of traffic each 266mhz for a total of 1066mhz, doesnt matter if it runs a dual or quad core they both have models that can run on a 1066 FSB. They say 1066 because thats the total bandwidth. It basically means that four signals can travel per clock cycle. Similar to Memory, DDR2 800 really runs at 400mhz, DDR= Dual Data rate, not the same but just a example.
 
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