Electronic – How should I select the crystal frequency

crystal

I have seen questions like this that talk about selecting a crystal for UART and I have seen questions like this that mention 32.768 kHz for RTC. But how do I decide the right crystal for my application.

At this point I am not sure what UART baud I will be using, but it will be one of the standard one. It would be nice to be able to get semi-accurate time in milliseconds, but not a requirement. Intuitively I think going with the fastest crystal that my micro can use will give me the most flexibility, but is there something I am missing? Is there a "general-purpose" frequency that people use?

Best Answer

Honestly I could spend hours describing the different frequencies and why to use them, but someone already has!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_oscillator_frequencies

This table has a UART column to tell you what UART frequencies it divides to well.

It also tells you when a frequency is a standard crystal for a specific comm system.