The memory bus connects the memory system and northbridge area of the chipset, determining the speed of the rest of the system. The northbridge area has four main buses, with the memory and front busses being directly related. Slow memory impacts computer speed, while the address bus affects every action on a computer.
The memory bus connects the memory system and the northbridge area of the chipset. This section of the chipset also connects directly to the central processing unit and graphics system. While this means that the northbridge is the center of many important computer functions, it is actually the computer’s memory that determines the speed of the bus. In essence, the speed of the computer’s memory creates the speed of this bus, which determines the speed of the rest of the system.
In computing, a bus transfers information from one place to another. Most modern computers have a large number of buses that cross-connect all sorts of different areas. The northbridge area of the chipset has four main buses. The front side bus connects to the central processing unit, the graphics bus connects to the graphics system, the internal bus connects to the southbridge section of the chipset, and the memory bus connects to the computer’s memory.
Each of these buses act independently of each other in most cases. The biggest exception to this is memory and front busses. These control the most essential parts of the computer’s operations and are directly related to each other. The speed of your computer’s memory determines how fast information flows across the memory bus. This means that the processor can only send and receive information as fast as the memory bus allows.
Using memory that is slower than your processor will directly impact the speed of your computer. Basic calculations often sit idle and take up processor space while waiting for follow-up information. This can create periods of latency, even on a fast computer. Strangely, more strenuous operations are rarely affected by a slow memory bus, as the time it takes for the processor to complete its operations is often greater than the transfer time.
Technically, the memory bus consists of two parts. The data bus transfers information between memory and the chipset. This part of the bus is often incorrectly called the memory bus, because it does the work most often associated with that part.
The second part of the memory bus is the address bus. The address bus tells the system where information can be stored when it enters memory and where information is located when it needs to leave memory. The speed of the address bus affects every action on a computer, since all applications need access to memory. Regardless of how fast this information comes in and out of the system, it is limited by how fast the address bus routes it to.
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