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Does FSB really matter for gaming?

A

avatar[djedi]

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 8, 2004
Messages
195
Hey, I was talking about things that matter to performance with a friend, and he mentioned something I either wasn't aware of, or wasn't sure of. Is Front Side Bus the most important factor to computing performance? Or perhaps a better question would be, is GPU performance more important than FSB performance in gaming? Or is FSB the biggest factor for general computing, and GPU performance is more important for gaming?

I'm wondering if I made a mistake in getting a i7-2600k, if my fsb/ram is limited in its speed compared to something else. (I have i7-2600k@4.8Ghz, Asus P8P67 Pro, 16GB corsair vengance 1600mhz memory, 2x580's SLI'd, 128GB ssd). Would changing my setup to something with a larger bus make things significantly faster?

Here is his original comment that he made to a 3rd person below:

You're still using DDR-1333 ram, which is the same speed of ram I purchased in 2007, when TF2 came out. When I bought my i7 system, I made sure to buy DDR3-2000 memory, so that I could run my FSB at 1866 FOR THE ENTIRE MACHINE.

An analogy: An 8-lane highway at 55mph is still going to have a higher volume of traffic than a 4-lane at 70mph.

In the world of multi-core processors and multi-threaded programming, it's better to have a wider, faster bus, than it is to have a HUGE amount of ram, when it comes to processing and gaming performance. If your goal is to edit pictures and videos with huge memory requirements, then yea, you'll want to snag 16gb of the cheapest ram you can find. The goal of gaming is to get data moving as quickly as possible, between ram (hopefully no disk reads with enough of it), the CPU and GPU.

Faster data movement = faster performance. So get it off disk and onto the bus as quickly as possible with an SSD, and then let the whole system crunch at a faster-than-standard FSB and you'll have the best performance you can find.
Click to expand...

P.S. I'm not trying to win an e-argument here, just trying to learn! Thanks!
 
The base clock isn't really adjustable. There isn't an FSB on AMD or Intel based machines anymore. RAM speed does very little in terms of performance as the applications and software just don't really benefit from it. At this point the two most important factors effecting gaming performance are your CPU's clock speed and your GPU.
 
Long story short, your friend mistakenly believed Sandy Bridge still has FSB, bought some dickass expensive RAM, and is now trying to justify wasting probably like $100. Don't let him con you or others into doing the same.

Your current setup is pretty much at optimal performance possible short of $3-4k LGA 2011 rigs. If anything, I'd swap out that P67 board for an Asus P8Z68-V board, it's more reliable and will give you better speeds on your SSD.
 
Tsuyoi said:
Long story short, your friend mistakenly believed Sandy Bridge still has FSB, bought some dickass expensive RAM, and is now trying to justify wasting probably like $100. Don't let him con you or others into doing the same.

Your current setup is pretty much at optimal performance possible short of $3-4k LGA 2011 rigs. If anything, I'd swap out that P67 board for an Asus P8Z68-V board, it's more reliable and will give you better speeds on your SSD.
Click to expand...

P67 is just as reliable as Z68 is. Despite the early recall issue, once solved they are fine. It doesn't do anything for SSD performance either. Do not confuse speeding up standard disk performance with SSD caching as anything else.
 
What is front side bus???

Oh right, I remember. Intel used it on the s775 CPUs and amd used it on their socket A CPUs? Those were the last CPUs to use fsb right?
 
OP, as others have said, your friend has no idea what he's talking about or was very misinformed.
 
Guys this is really good info; thank you so much for helping clarify the matter for me. The articles really helped flesh out my understanding. I love, and am continuously impressed with, the [H]!
 
Ever since 3D gaming came into play on computers, the GPU performance is the most important component you can have for gaming. I doubt it'll change very soon, but maybe something awesome will be invented and change it all. Sure, other components can cause a bottleneck if your GPU is waaaaay ahead of the rest of your PC, but if you have a generally competent PC and want to improve game performance, RAM amount (not speed) or GPU will be the most upgrade for the dollars. RAM speed is like... uhm... bottom of the barrel.
 
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