What Is Frontside Bus (FSB)?

A Frontside Bus (FSB) is like a secret handshake between your computer and its chipset. It's the fastest way for the CPU to talk to the rest of the motherboard, and programs can't do it any other way. Frontside buses were all the rage back in the day, but now they're just kind of there, doing their thing. This is because we've moved away from systems that use a frontside bus as their main communication link between the CPU and system memory and started using new-fangled technologies like PCI Express. It's kind of sad that frontside buses are no longer popular—their heyday was pretty short-lived, but they were integral to building fast computers for almost two decades. The FSB wasn't a big fan of the CPU. It was good that they got along so well because they were always together. The FSB helped carry data around the computer hardware and ensured it got where it needed to be on time. But sometimes, it would get tired of having data all day long and just take off for a few minutes without telling anyone where it was going or when it would be back. The CPU didn't like that—it felt like its best friend had abandoned it—but he knew better than to complain about it. That would only make things worse. So instead of grumbling about how much he missed his old pal, the CPU decided to build himself another friend: the GPU. Your computer's speed is measured in two ways: how fast it can do the math and how quickly it can move data around. The first one is called "clock speed," and the second one is called "FSB. " It is a fancy term for the thing that moves data from your processor to all of your other computer parts. It's a little like your brain—it does a lot of work, but you probably don't think about it much unless something goes wrong. All CPUs have an FSB, and most also have a clock speed. For example, if you're running at 2. 4 GHz with an FSB of 400 MHz, you have an FSB to CPU ratio of 6:1.