What does the northbridge do exactly?

[Thasp]

I have read that the AMD64's on die memory controller speaks directly to the memory instead of going through the northbridge chipset then to the memory.

 

If this is true, why is the northbridge still there - what is its purpose? I am curious, especially since in any quiet cooling settings on a summer night, tries to burn a hole through my case. What is it doing that makes it so damn hot all the time?

[cull]

for one if your running hot buy the vc-re. as for the actual question, I have no idea, I want to find out though.

[PUTALE1]

NB is used to connect all the pci, sata, etc from/to the cpu and the slots if I am not mistaken.

[cull]

i thought it was omething like that, but i dint want to seem completely retarded if it was much more complicated than that

[red930]

Before the A64 with the onboard memory controller, chipsets were designed with two large scale integrated circuits.

 

The Northbridge contained the "memory controller" and the Southbridge handled the peripheral interconnect.

 

The two chips were used hence the term chipset.

[RGone]

The south bridge handles PCI, PCI-e, hard drive functions and so forth. So that is the south bridge. The north bridge handles memory and is in the cpu on A64 by AMD. What does that make the chipset on the mobo?

 

RGone...

 

I see ExRoadie has gotten in ahead. Bye now...

[Voltes-5]

Class, dismissed, any other questions can be found here. :nod:

 

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showpost.p...04&postcount=24

[DevilSlayer1298]

Before the North bridge was contained the memory controller and was were the FSB was produced. Now both of those functions are now on-chip for A64's. The remaining chip connects all the PCI-E/PCI slots, SATA, PATA, does the Nvidia Raid, LAN, sound, and produces the LDT bus and connects those to the CPU.