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How to Choose a Motherboard
And Not Be Sorry Afterwards

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Choosing a chipset

As a rule, one can choose different motherboards based on various chipsets for one and the same processor. There are currently only four manufacturers of desktop chipsets worthy mentioning in the Intel platform sector (Intel, VIA, SiS, ATI), and also four manufacturers in the AMD sector, but the combination is different (VIA, SiS, NVIDIA, ATI). You can easily notice that VIA, SiS, and ATI "wait on" everybody, Intel does not make chipsets for AMD processors, and NVIDIA is not yet into chipsets for Intel processors, though it may start to do it soon (a remark to know-alls familiar with the word "X-Box": this article is about computers, or to be more exact, about the desktop sector of this market, i.e. about PC). Choosing a chipset is one of the most difficult problems when you buy a motherboard. There is more in this problem that meets the eye: as it often happens to homo sapiens, who invented logics only to immediately give it up, the most difficult problems for us are traditionally those, which don't really exist. That's natural: they just cannot be solved, period. This problem is one of them...

I shall not go into the analysis of performance differences between chipsets: all I think about chipset performance and motherboard performance on the whole will be given in the chapter "I need a fast motherboard!" But now, let's talk about "compatibility" and "glitches". Where is the truth? The truth is out there:

  1. Any modern chipset copes well with functions given in its specification in 99% of cases. You can learn the functions on the official web site of a manufacturer, no one will conceal them from you.
  2. That buggy 1% can be found in any randomly selected chipset from any randomly selected manufacturer, we just have to lump its existence, because we are realists. In order to secure some guarantees in this issue, you just have to follow one piece of advice given in the chapter "I want a state-of-the-art motherboard!"

Besides, it won't hurt to remember:

  1. Features of the chipsets released at approximately the same time by different manufacturers are almost perfectly identical. Sometimes a happy manufacturer manages to design a new fashionable feature a tad earlier, but as a rule, such breakaways from other manufacturers do not exceed a couple of months. Another reason to increase your "detention period" for new products, by the way...
  2. Intra-assay new chipset DOESN'T DIFFER from its predecessor in real (necessary) functionality. Most often it just has a couple of new fashionable features, which won't be necessary for the owners of old chipsets minimum for two years. Your motherboard does not have Serial ATA, while your neighbour has it? Ah, what a pity... But are Parallel ATA hard disks already abandoned? Don't pay attention to bells and whistles – look straight into the point.

There can be only one conclusion from the above said: Strange as it may seem, chipsets generally work as they should, and besides they are approximately similar in functionality. Does the "chipset choice" problem really exist? Personally I don't see this problem for a common regular user, who just needs "thread and thrum". Forget about the chipset. We have a motherboard. It has certain features: support for a certain CPU type, memory, drives, video cards, connectors for external devices, etc. Does it matter how this functionality is implemented in a given motherboard? If a chipset supports 8 USB ports, but a motherboard has only 6 of them – de facto we have 6 ports, no matter what this chipset is capable of. If a motherboard is based on i865, but it supports processors for Socket 775 – it means that designers managed to realize this support, despite the formal lack of it. Most functions supported by a chipset are given in specifications of motherboards based on this chipset. If some feature is not mentioned – it means that this motherboard most probably does not support this feature. If there are some additional features – it means that they are implemented outside the chipset. So let's evaluate a given product instead of its chips. Let these chips be evaluated by engineers who design this motherboard.

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Vladimir Rybnikov (puree@ixbt.com)
February 1, 2004


 

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