Okay, as Im looking at upgrading this weekend possibly... I see that the processor I want (the socket 939 AMD64 3700XP) has a 2000 mhz front side bus (FSB). However, why are manufacturers offering a socket 939 motherboard with only a 1000 mhz FSB? Yes, I see they also offer the 2000 mhz FSB, but this seems out of place to offer one at half the speed too for the same processor. Comments please... Eric T

Its not really a FSB, its called hypertransport, its similar to the FSB. The reason you are seeing 2 different speeds is that S939 AMD's have 1GHZ up and down hypertransport so some add it together and come up with 2GHZ since and others call it 1GHZ since its 1GHZ each way.

Actually what you're seeing is not just the frequency (MHz), but MT/sec as well. MT/sec stands for MegaTransfers per sec. If the timing is derived from both the rising and falling edges of a clock cycle rather than one complete cycle, the effective rate is doubled (i.e. a 1000MHz clock yields 2000 megatransfers per second).Most motherboards for the CPU you're considering are rated at 200MHz Front Side Bus (not 2000MHz... though we can hope that day comes soon). The HTT is 5 (as set in the BIOS from the factory). 200 x 5 = 1000MHz which will yield 2000MT/sec. The CPU's (and most motherboards of the 1000/2000 flavor) are rated at the 1000Mhz (1GHz) FSB value.What you want is a motherboard rated for 1000MHz/2000MT/sec and include some good quality PC3200 memory (200MHz FSB) and then you've got a strong start for a nice system.Hope this helps,Greg

Okay, so let's say I just go for a non SLi board and stick w/ PCIe. Is that an atrocity to save the extra $$$?

Not in my world. I'm waiting for SLI to mature further.Now for other games SLI could be very useful (for those games that can take advantage of it). Also, there are other important issues that must be addressed with SLI as well... case cooling and power being a couple of the most important.Greg

Personally if I were building today I would definitely go for an SLI capable board, especially considering they now have dual PCIE 16 rather than splitting 8 and 8. With that being said, the new NVIDIA 7800 GTX 512 cards ALMOST rival a 7800 GTX SLI setup...-PaulLiquid CooledAMD 4000 San Diego2 Gigs Kingston Corsair XMS CL2Dual 7800 GTX 24 inch widescreen dual 19 inch LCDRaid-0

You might want to check out AnandTech's review of the ASUS A8R for something different. How does an HTT of 325.0 MHz with a x9 multiplier for 2925.1 MHz on a 4000+ AMD64 San Diego (E4) CPU sound? Natch you won't get 2-2-2-5 memory (at least today), but still!scott s..