Difference between Northbridge and Southbridge

Northbridge:

The northbridge is the major bus circuitry that provides support and control for the main memory, cache memory, and PCI bus controllers. The northbridge is typically a single chip (usually the larger of two or more chipsets), but it can be more than one chip.

In a chipset, the northbridge supplies the chipset its alpha designation and distinction in a chipset family. For example, the chip FW82439HX is the northbridge chip of the Intel 430HX chipset.

Southbridge:

The southbridge includes the controllers for the peripheral devices and any controllers not essential to the PC’s basic functions, such as the EIDE (Enhanced Integrated Device Electronics) controller and the serial port controllers. The southbridge is typically only one chip and is common among all variations in a chipset family and even between manufacturers, such as the SiS 5513 and the Intel PIIX south bridge chips.

Northbridge vs Southbridge:

Northbridge	Southbridge
1. Northbridge is a chip in the core logic chipset architecture on the northern section of the motherboard.	1. Southbridge is a chip in the core logic chipset architecture on the southern section of the motherboard.
2. It is directly connected to the CPU.	2. It isn't directly connected to the CPU.
3. It is faster than Southbridge.	3. It is slower than Northbridge.
4. It connects CPU, RAM, PCI and AGP slots.	4. It connects BIOS, SATA, PCI and IDE and UBS ports.