Newbie Requesting Assistance Please

Weioo said:

Here's my thing... I'm not one of you super-knowledge databases... yet. I am a PC gamer and have been into computers for about 10 years. I have built my current computer, only with the help of a friend selecting compatible parts. Basically I know quite a bit beyond the basics, but defintely not enough to be a OCer, yet.

My goal is to learn the terms, knowledge, and gain the ability to OC myself. I built my system just a year ago (Wow, what a bad time to decide to build a computer, It's already way outdated. AGP slots 4tl) and I'm going to buy a few more fans and go with a max OC to hold me over 'til AM2/AM3's come out.

I had spent a good 6 hours yesterday reading through FAQ's and Guides trying to find info on OCing an Athlon 64 Winchester 3200+ (939). I found one guide that was very handy at explaining the FSB/HTT, Multiplier, CPU speeds. It also mentioned having to OC the RAM as well. After reading through it, I thought I was starting to gain a good understanding for what needed to be done. I then looked through a couple more FAQ's/Guides that used a lot of terms I'm not familiar with. Terms such as north bridge, SLI, NF4, etc. A lot of these FAQ's and Guides seem to be using terms that people like me don't know, which turns into a bunch of gibberish and nonsense when you're trying to read through something where you don't understand every 5th word.

My question is simple - Where can I find a FAQ/Guide that explains everything VERY thoroughly, so noobs like myself can understand? I am willing to take the time to learn much more about computer hardware and become one of these knowledge databases that all you guys are.

Sorry about posting in the CPU thread, Not sure where I could have put this to be honest. Thanks in advance!

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Gnufsh said:

I'm not sure where to find such a guide, but I can give you help with a few of those terms.

north bridge:
Motherboards are based on what's called a chipset. This is typically (although not always), split into to chips. The south bridge handles I/O related tasks like having an IDE/SATA controller, interfacing with the PCI bus and the like. The south bridge also interfaces with the north bridge. The north bridge interfaces with the AGP slot, includes a memory controller and interfaces with the cpu. In athlon64 computers, since the memory controller is integrated onto the CPU, most chipsets are single chip solutions, including all this functionality.

SLI stands for Scalable Link Interface. It's a technology used by Nvidia to allow you to use two of their graphics cards together to improve performance. You need a motherboard that supports SLI and matching video cards to do this.

NF4 is short for the Nvidia NForce4 chipset.

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