You have to consider a lot of factors when deciding on a final configuration for your PC. The processor, amount of memory, video card, hard-disk capacity, etc, are the foundation of a good configuration. However, the foundation for these—the motherboard and its chipset—if often ignored.

A chipset is a combination of chips that sit on the motherboard. It’s responsible for most communication that takes place between different components on the motherboard; and decides many important features of a motherboard, like the AGP speed (2x or 4x), peak hard-disk speed (ATA 66/100), memory type (RDRAM or SDRAM) and size. Chipsets differ in the features and functionality that they can offer to a motherboard, and consequently the entire system. Therefore, knowing about various chipsets and how they differ in their functionality can help you decide the best motherboard for your needs.

In the old days, the chipset was usually a given. If you were going to buy an Intel processor, you had little choice but to go in for an Intel chipset. However, things have changed. While the contenders in the chipset market—Intel, AMD, VIA, Ali, and SiS—remain more or less the same, the choices offered by them have increased.

In this article, we’ve compiled a list of the most commonly available chipsets for the PC platform. Please refer to it as we take you through the various aspects that they control. Since a majority of the desktop market uses chipsets based on Intel or AMD processors, we’ll take a look at them in detail.

CPU interface

The type of packaging—that is, the casing that houses the CPU circuitry—done for microprocessors has been under constant development. Due to this, the type of interface a CPU uses to connect to a motherboard, which is identified by a chipset, also changes. Fortunately, the choice of interfaces available here is restricted. Most new AMD processors like Thunderbird and Duron use the Socket A interface, while Intel prefers Socket 370 for Celeron and PIII processors. However, chipsets supporting older interfaces like Socket 7, and Slot 1 are still available. Socket 7 was used for the earlier Pentium, Cyrix, and AMD K6 series of processors.

Chipsets' Capabilities