How to Choose A MotherBoard

Friday, February 01, 2008

Whenever you plan to upgrade your system or purchase a new one, you often get confused with the technical jargon associated with a motherboard? Like the features it should support and the optimum price to pay for your requirements. In this story we provide information on the must-have features on a motherboard. We also tested 24 motherboards from Rs 2-8 k for price, performance and features to help you come up with the right choice

Within a family, a mother provides support to her children and facilitates their growth and performance in the world outside. She is the one responsible for her child's performance: good or bad. Ditto is the case with a PC motherboard, ie mother of all boards. If your system is able to offer all the features and performs well (it's stable and scalable), you would invariably end up praising the motherboard and if it has limited features, and is poor on performance, the poor board would be the first to receive flak. Though you can never replace your mother in real life, thankfully, this is not the case with PCs. So, in case you are planning to upgrade or buy a new motherboard, take out a few minutes from your hectic routine and read through the following. You'll find what's hot and what's not in the market. Here we go!

CPU support
A motherboard forms the base for any system. Each component is directly or indirectly connected to it. Invariably it's the type of motherboard that determines what CPU it can accommodate. The Intel-based motherboard will not accommodate CPU from competing vendors. In fact, there is even a possibility that it might not even accommodate a higher gigs CPU from the same vendor. Generally, all entry-level or budget-range motherboards don't have support for Quad cores; they only support single and dual core processors. Such is the need of various applications today, that you at least need a motherboard that has support for dual core processors. But the big question remains: what processor to go for? With Intel and AMD dishing out so many options, it's always difficult to pick the right one as per your need. Well, if your need is very basic and you simply need a system to run office applications and connect to the Net, then any budget range processor such as Intel Pentium IV, Intel Core Solo or AMD Sempron would suffice. But it's still advisable to opt for a motherboard that has support for dual core processors such as Intel Core 2 Duo, Pentium Dual Core, and AMD Athlon, so that tomorrow when your needs increase you can upgrade the processor rather than entirely changing your motherboard.
With the entry of Quad Core in the desktop segment, we even have motherboards with support for Quad Core processors. In case, you are a professional gamer or a high-end power user, then going for motherboards having support for a Quad Core processor makes sense. Also, there is a move towards the 45 nm technology, so checking whether your motherboard has support for that or not is also an intelligent move. We already have a quad core processor based on this technology from Intel, AMD will be joining the bandwagon soon, and we also believe that processors based on 45nm technology will rule the market in near future. So, this surely is an important criterion when we think in terms of upgradability.

Which chipset?
A chipset is basically a group of ICs or several chips designed to work together. Since, the chipset controls communication amongst the processor and external devices, it plays a crucial role in determining the system's performance. We have two types of chipsets on the motherboard: Northbridge and Southbridge. The Northbridge links the CPU to high-speed devices, especially main memory and graphics controller while the Southbridge connects it to low-speed peripheral buses such as PCI. The chipset limits the CPU types and speeds that the board can take, the type of RAM you can install, and also limits the extras such as integrated graphics, sound and USB 2.0 ports that can be included on the board.

While opting for an entry level motherboard it's always advisable to go for the one with in-built graphics chipset, otherwise you might have to bear the additional cost of a graphics card. Chipset also allows you to configure RAID on your motherboard, but that's common across only high-end motherboards.

It you are planning for a high-end board and will insert your own gaming cards, then choose a board having the latest NVIDIA, Intel or ATI chipsets. This will improve the overall performance. Intel P35 and ATI 790FX are new chipsets that support Quad Core processors and are quite popular these days.

It's always an advantage to have all three display output options

RAM support
Not so long ago DDR2 replaced the DDR, which in turn replaced the SDRAM from the market. Now DDR3 is a threat to DDR2, which is slowly but surely finding its stake in the market. The move towards DDR3 is mainly a step towards Green IT. DDR3 promises to reduce power consumption by nearly 30% as compared to DDR2. It also offers higher bandwidth compared to DDR2, hence power users and gamers will go for DDR3. You will not find support for DDR3 in entry-level motherboards, it is mainly available in the high-end versions. For entry-level DDR2 is good enough.

It is always important to check how many DIMM slots are there in your motherboard. This could be a restricting factor in terms of expandability. Go for boards having at least 2 DIMM slots; they will provide you an economical expandability option. Usually 4 DIMM slots are common across medium and high- end motherboards, which enables them to have more expandability options in terms of total RAM.

Graphics support
You won't need a graphics card if you choose a motherboard with an onboard graphics chipset and when gaming is not your major requirement. But in case you don't have built-in graphics chipset, you will need a graphics card to get display on your monitor. Entry-level or budget range motherboards won't support high-end graphics cards, so you can opt for either NVIDIA GeForce 8400 series, ATI Radeon 2400 series or the 3000 series. They won't be heavy on your pocket and will give you good Vista performance along with Direct X capability.

For medium range or high-end cards, it is beneficial to go for a motherboard that supports SLI or CrossFire, 'coz invariably with more and more challenging games being developed, you'll feel the need to have more than one card. So, look for the board which has SLI and CrossFire support. Also remember, if you are opting for the card having high capability, then invariably you would need a higher power supply. Do check how much power supply your motherboard can bear before buying an expensive card.

Expansion slots
Expansion slots are generally referred to as PCI and PCIe slots via which you can add an additional RAID card (if your chipset has support for it), graphics card, audio Card, LAN card, etc. So, it's important to have more onboard slots, so that your motherboard has more expansion options. We have seen motherboards with just single PCI and PCIe slots, and they are decent enough when it comes to entry-level boards, but for high-end motherboards you'll surely need more than that. For SLI and CrossFire to work you need at least two PCIe slots. So, if expandability is there on your mind, opt for a motherboard that has maximum expandability options.

Apart from the regular SATA port, some boards have additional SATA ports operated through a different chipset

Storage and IDE
SATA has replaced PATA completely across the entire range of motherboards. What matters is how many SATA connectors does the motherboard support? That will determine how many HDDs you can actually use with the board. Four is generally the norm, but we have seen boards supporting six as well, which is pretty cool. RAID is common across the entire range of motherboards and ensures an extra layer of stability. So while buying a motherboard it's important to consider whether your motherboard has support for RAID or not, as it ensures data safety and enhances performance.

One important thing that we noticed recently was the inability to load OS via your CD ROM drive which is connected to an IDE. Some IDEs don't allow you to boot up your system; you would need to connect an external drive via USB for being able to load your OS on to the HDD. This is a big demerit and should be avoided at all costs. Read the specifications carefully and check whether the motherboard's IDE supports booting or not.

Connectivity options
All motherboards come with a LAN port and some USB ports. See how many USB ports does the board supports? Does it support USB 2.0 connectivity? We have seen boards with about two to six USB ports. The more they have, the better it is, as most of the external peripherals can easily be connected via a USB.

In the high-end boards we have also seen support for WiFi which is a welcome change brought about by Asus. Even HDMI, DVI has become a common feature in the current motherboards, allowing you the opportunity to watch digitally enhanced displays. Just connect your LCDs and enjoy watching a superior digital display. FireWire and e-SATA are some of the other key features that are increasingly being incorporated across motherboards. They provide additional benefits and are a big plus to have in terms of future expandability and scalability.

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