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How to Choose the Right Gaming Motherboard
With so many performance and resource hungry applications and games coming up, you require motherboards with the latest cutting edge technologies. We tested 14 of them to help you choose the right one. Let's start off with what to look out for
Saturday, March 01, 2008
With so many performance and resource hungry applications and games coming
up, you require motherboards with the latest cutting edge technologies. We
tested 14 of them to help you choose the right one. Let's start off with what to
look out for
The motherboard houses all other hardware such as CPU, RAM and others, so
technically speaking it's solely responsible for the overall performance of a
computer. Today motherboards have so much to offer in terms of features that
it's difficult to choose the right one. However, the key factor is the
performance they deliver in various environments such as gaming, 3D rendering,
business apps and so on.
So, before you decide on a new motherboard, read through the following
sections to find out what you need to look for.
CPU support
There are many CPUs available in the market, single core, dual core and quad
core. But these can't work with just about any motherboard out there. The
motherboard can have either an LGA socket to accommodate the new range of
Intel's processors or an AM2 socket to accommodate most of the new processors
from AMD. Generally, the 8k+ range supports multi core processors, but some of
them are also optimized to accommodate the latest 45 nm technology based CPUs
that consume lesser amount of power and perform better than the other processors
available.
Both Intel and AMD provide so much choice in terms of CPUs. Whether you need
a single core, a dual core or a Hi-speed quad core processor based on 45nm
technology, depends solely on the type of application. However, while purchasing
a motherboard, check what type of processors does it support. Would it be able
to support the upcoming range of Hi-speed CPUs or not? This is specially
important, because with applications becoming more and more performance hungry,
you might need a newer processor after six months or an year.
Type of chipsets
A motherboard contains two kinds of chipsets: Northbridge and Southbridge.
The two are designed to work together while performing different functions. The
Northbridge chipset links the CPU to high speed components like main memory
(RAM) and display controller while the Southbridge controls the CPUs connection
with other comparatively lower speed devices such as PCI and sound controllers.
Since the chipset alone controls communication between the processor and other
devices, it plays a crucial role in determining the performance of a
motherboard.
The chipset determines the type of CPU that can be used and the speed at which
it can operate. Moreover, it controls the type of RAM that can be used. In high
end motherboards, the onboard video chipset is deliberately removed to
accommodate more performance specific features such as a dual SATA controller
with onboard RAID support and dual BIOS. Many more features are also tweaked to
give better performance. Apart from the regular chipsets, Intel P35 and ATI
790FX are the new ones that support quad core processors and are getting
popular.
RAM support
DDR2 RAM has, to a great extent, replaced DDR RAM, the popularity owing to
superior performance and lower power consumption. Something same applies to SD
RAM being replaced by DDR RAM earlier. DDR 2 RAM and even the latest DDR3 RAM
are the latest hot technologies in RAM market, so it becomes very important to
know what the requirement is.
Another important thing is that how many DIMM slots are there on the
motherboard. Usually 4 DIMM slots are common across high-end motherboards, but
some of them can have up to 6 too. Keeping this in mind is very important
because this factor enables motherboards to have more expandability option in
terms of total RAM. Some motherboards also have an option of supporting
different RAM modules, ie ddr1 and ddr2 alongside, so such motherboards can also
help you reduce the cost if you are upgrading your computer.
Expansion slots
Here we consider mostly PCI slots, PCIe 16x, PCIe 4x, and PCI1x. All these
play a key role in terms of expansion, as they let you upgrade your system. Thus
it is very important to have more slots onboard so that your motherboard has
more expansion capability and options. For SLI and CrossFire to work you would
need at least 2 PCIe slots. Today there are certain motherboards that come with
up to 4 PCIe 16x slots. But with more and more things coming as an onboard
option you need to check what is more important for you, you want to add more
GFX cards or more PCI cards to put additional RAID card (if your chipset has
support for it) , hi-definition Audio Card, LAN card, etc.
Storage
Today, most of the storage devices come with SATA connectivity, which has
pushed IDE slightly off the chat. So what matters more is to check out how many
SATA ports are there, are there two different chips handling them, and finally
whether they support RAID capabilities or not. Now the trend is of having 4 SATA
ports but in certain boards there are up to 8 onboard SATA ports, and RAID is
generally common across the range and provides the extra layer of stability.
Another important thing is IDE because of its presence in optical drive
connectivity. It cannot be left behind because most optical drives still have
IDE connection. So you need to check whether both are available as an option or
not.
Connectivity
External connectivity is as crucial for a computer as air for a human being, all
the motherboards come with LAN, USB 2.0, or firewire ports as default but the
big question here is that how many ports are available in each category, because
having more ports means more external connectivity; there are motherboards that
have 4 USBs and those that have up to 6 onboard USB slots.
FireWire and E-SATA options are some of the other key features that are soon
becoming regular across the motherboards as they provide a faster data transfer
rate than the normal USB 2.0.
So with newer devices coming up that have these connections available, you
need to have a motherboard that provides proper support for these.
Rahul Gupta and Vijay Chauhan
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