Northbridge

• žThe northbridge gets its name for commonly being North of the PCI bus.
• žAs shown in the below picture, it's common for the northbridge and southbridge to have a heatsink; in addition, the northbridge is usually slightly larger than the southbridge.

 


 Southbridge

• žThe Southbridge gets its name for commonly being South of the PCI bus.
• žThe southbridge typically implements the "slower" capabilities of the motherboard in a northbridge/southbridge chipset computer architecture.
• žThe southbridge can usually be distinguished from the northbridge by not being directly connected to the CPU. Rather, the northbridge ties the southbridge to the CPU.