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I've just recieved a PM asking me about chipsets, so I thought i'd answer it here for anybody else who might be wondering.
Chipsets are traditionaly made up of two seperate microchips, the North Bridge and the South Bridge, named after their original locations on the motherboards that first used them (one at the top, one at the bottom).
The North bridge is responsible for transporting information from the memory to the CPU via the Front Side Bus and vice-versa. Typically, the CPU works much, much faster than the memory and so a 'manager' is needed to make sure that the correct information is sent to the CPU at the right time, and that the processed information is delivered back to the memory as quickly as possible.
Some North Bridges are also responsible for 'off-loading' other jobs onto additional hardware. For example, if the processed information leaving the CPU is meant to go to the graphics card, the north bridge will handle this without any interaction from the CPU itself. Nowadays, however, a part of the CPU itself is usually responsible for doing this rather than the North Bridge.
The South Bridge Can be thought of as the computer's 'eyes and ears'. It contains all of the electronics needed for handling all input / output operations such as reading from the mouse and keyboard and sending and recieving information to and from the USB ports.
On motherboards that have on-board graphics, sound and network ports, the south bridge is also responsible for these functions as well, although there are often some additional microchips that are controlled by the South Bridge to help improve performance by taking some of the strain off the South Bridge itself.
However, the South Bridge needs the CPU to do some of the calculations for it in order to drive the graphics and sound of a computer. This is one of the reasons why adding a graphics card and / or sound card can greatly improve a computer's performance, since the additional card does all of the work without having to use the CPU as much (and consequently the main memory). Adding graphics and sound cards does not render your chipset useless because it still has to do the very important jobs mentioned above.
There a number of chipset manufacturers, most notably VIA, SIS, Intel and Nvidia. Whilst all chipsets do the same thing, some techies prefer a certain chipset vender over others, mainly due to performance issues or just plain personal reasons!
One last note, the Nforce 4 chipset actually consists of only one chip rather than two. The North Bridge and South Bridge are combined on one big microchip rather than two seperate ones, but it's still a chipset just like all the others!
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Posted: 2005-12-07 18:41:42
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Ugh, I can't believe you said VIA with a straight face cyco!
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Posted: 2005-12-07 21:19:09
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@cyco. im getting a usb pic card soon for my old pc. will be able to put broadband on it which will be useful as i will be able to download updates and even hook up my camera and other things to that pc. just hope it works. should do
dude_se
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Posted: 2005-12-07 21:44:19
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@Gigs
I had my fingers crossed behind my back
@Dude
Everything should work fine providing that you're running Windows 98 Second Edition, not first (or a newer OS, of course).
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Posted: 2005-12-07 21:48:18
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98 se. too slow on me. anyway i meant pci card
will be useful as i can install programs without copying them onto a cd from this computer. now that im getting a usb pci card i should look into more ram but its quite old and cant see any on ebay so might leave it and live with 32mb
dude_se
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Posted: 2005-12-07 21:52:18
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hey cycovision!
dont worry bout the last one, i figured it out
now, ive got a new problem htough, my downloads keep on cutting off! It mainly happends with the really big ones, if taht helps - ive tried firefox and mozilla, but still tehyre mucking up
please help if you can - cycovision and others!
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Posted: 2005-12-10 21:46:32
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use torrents for dlig stuff.
never vuts out, even if it does will finished when you reconnect!
fatreg
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Posted: 2005-12-10 21:57:28
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i will lol, but i still dont want any buggy web explorer's
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Posted: 2005-12-10 22:29:12
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what isp have you got? maybe they are cutting you off after a certain period of time. oh does it happen with any big download or just on certain pages? this problem cant be browser related as far as i know, so must be pc or isp related
dude_se
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Posted: 2005-12-10 22:54:17
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i had similar problem, and it was due to bad isp- to download with mozzila you must have uninterrupted data flow (speed may vary, but flow must be continuous). use flash get 1.6, it can resume broken download.
This message was posted from a T610
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Posted: 2005-12-11 03:33:53
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