A few Motherboard features I don't understand

[Moontrash]

I've been reading a lot lately on certain MB's and a few things I saw made me wanna ask some questions

I noticed something on the MB called an FSB(Front Side Bus). Certain boards have a FSB with 2400mhz and others with 2600mhz. Gigabyte boards (different classes...970 and 990) have this and wondered what the big difference was. What kind of speed difference will it make choosing one over the other? Are there any major drawbacks? What does this affect in terms of performance?

Another thing I notice is how often newer boards accept faster RAM but a lot of user reviews/comments I read have a lot of the same issues. RAM in a quite a few boards won't set up with the speed it is....i.e...If you buy DDR3 1600 speed RAM it sets back to 1333 speed. Ofcourse you can go into the BIOS and set it manually but for those who aren't deft at this procedure it can be precarious. Why do these boards advertise that they can accept this speed RAM....even without overclocking...and a lot of times it drops down a notch to a slower speed? Is this a RAM compatibility issue or a BIOS issue or just a crappy board/BIOS?

[aedipuss]

the faster the fsb/ram the higher you could possibly overclock.

setting the fsb to a higher speed automatically would overclock the cpu, not something you want the board to do by itself.

[Moontrash]

So if you don't overclock it's not a big deal in terms of speed increase? I'm on the fence with a few of these MB's cause of the issues with 1600 speed RAM dropping down in speed to 1333....makes me wanna go with 1333 speed stock RAM and save of few bucks to spare me the hassle.

[Hoser Rob]

A faster fsb is better, period, regardless of overclocking or not. Look up what it does and it's apparent why.

But I'm not so sure if the difference you mentioned in fsb speeds would matter all much.

I wouldn't overclock myself. Too many potential problems. I'd rather save up for a faster computer/mb. That works properly out of the box.

[jagabo]

The Front Side Bus is the bus through which the CPU communicates with everything outside of the CPU -- DRAM, peripherals, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front-side_bus

Intel CPUs are designed to work with specific FSB speeds. With locked CPUs you can only overclock by increasing the FSB speed.