Mainboards buyers guide

North bridge

The north bridge is best viewed as a crossroads of four important elements of the motherboard. Firstly there is the direct connection to processor, which is called the Front Side Bus (FSB). This bus is used by all other parts of the computer to communicate with the processor. Then there is the memory controller that is built in to the north bridge, however with the newer AMD processors the memory controller is incorporated into the processor itself, which eliminates the need for a memory controller on the chipset. A third important task for the north bridge is to arrange the communications to and from the graphics card, on older motherboards through AGP, on more modern motherboards this is done through PCI-Express. If a chipset has an integrated graphics chip, this will reside in the north bridge as well. Last there is the communication bus between the north and the south bridge. Some manufacturers will use the standard PCI-Express interface for an integrated graphics chip, others have developed their own interface for this. At the end of this guide we have provided a small overview of specifications and possibilities of current north bridge chips.