The Essential Guide to Choosing a Motherboard
Oct 07 '00
Whether building your own PC, or having one built for you, careful consideration should be made before choosing your motherboard. Since the motherboard acts as a traffic cop, tying singnals from your CPU, memory, Video Card, hard drives, and various periphreals ( i.e. sound cards ), choice of a quality motherboard will have a greater impact on your overall experience with the system than any other component. When budgeting your PC, make sure to get a quality motherboard from a reputable manufacturer ( more on that later ). The $50 or $60 extra you spend for a good motherboard will be worth the cost in saved aggrevation.
Where do I start?
The most important thing to consider before building your PC is the overall platform. Your choice of motherboard chipsets determines what motherboards you want to look at. (Note: This review focuses on current generation AMD and Intel products only. ) If you are going to build an AMD based machine ( Duron or Thunderbird/Athlon ), the choice is simple, get a KT-133a based motherboard that supports the Socket A CPU interface. The only reason to consider a slot A based architecture is if you already have a Slot A processor. Even then, you may want to consider biting the bullet and getting a Socket A processor ( Durons are well under $100, and the price cuts next week will bring the cost of a 950MHz TBird down to about $250 )
If you want to build a Pentium III or Celeron based Intel system, there are a lot chipsets to choose from. The primary chipsets in modern motherboards you can choose from at the BX, i810, i815, i820, i840, Via Apollo Pro 133, and Via Apollo Pro 133A.
BX Chipset
The oldest chipset available for modern motherboards. The BX chipset debuted in April 1998 with the introduction of 100MHz Front Side Bus Pentium II processors. Vendors like ABIT, Asus, and Soyo have extended the voltage range of motherboards to accept Coppermine Pentium III's and Celeron II processors. The reason this chipset is still used is simple, it is considered to be one of the best available. The memory transfer rates to the CPU are only exceeded by the dual RAMBUS channel architecture of the i840 chipset. The only real draw back to the chipset is the lack of 1/2 AGP multiplier. (Note: I am aware of the lack of 4X AGP, but since there is no noticable difference in 3d game performance, I don't consider this to be a draw back.) This effects how far overclockers can push a BX based system, but generally, up to 140MHz FSB is stable even with the 2/3 AGP multiplier. This is a good choice for either a budget system, or an overclocker with their eye on a 700MHz or faster processor. This is also the ideal Celeron II motherboard whether you are an overclocker or not.
i810
Good for budget systems. These motherboards had low end integrated graphics cards. These are not a good choice for a gamer or anyone with high end video needs (CAD/CAM, video editing,... ), but are perfectly fine for office use, or for people who are only into surfing the web, and using standard Microsoft Office applications. This was the first Intel chipset to support 133MHz FSB, but the integrated video card ruined the motherboard.
i815
This chipset is intended to kill the BX, but it is getting a run for its' money. Memory transfer rates are inferior to the BX motherboards. The only tangible benefit of this motherboard over the BX is the 1/2 AGP multiplier. It makes this motherboard chipset more suitable for overclocking Pentium III 650 and slower chips.
i820
Also know as the Intel Edsel. This came out in 2 flavors, with support for SDRAM through the infamous Memory Translator Hub, and with support for RAMBUS. All i820 motherboards that support SDRAM should have been recalled by now, but look out for them because they are all defective. While there is nothing wrong with the RAMBUS based i820 motherboards, since i820 does NOT support dual channel RAMBUS, the benefits of the higher bandwidth memory are not noticeable.
i840
This shows what RAMBUS can do when things are done right. The i840 motherboards are designed for servers and high end workstations. Therefore, not many people can afford them for home use, but they support RAMBUS in all of it's dual channle glory. Until the Pentium 4 is released, this is Intels high end product.
Whew, that was exhausting, now what?
Well, we are past all the hard stuff now. Once you have a chipset chosen, the choices are the same regardless of platform. You should consider the following items:
AGP Support ( 4X is nice but not necessary. 2X or higher will do. For people into CAD/CAM, look for AGP Pro Support )
Number of PCI Slots - The more the better. This will allow you to expand your system in the future. Get 5 PCI slots or more.
ISA Support - If you have old ISA cards you want to bring forward to your new system, look for ISA support. If not, those ISA slots are taking up real-estate that could be used for PCI slots instead.
IDE Support It has been a while since motherboards did not have integrated IDE support, but there are still some important considerations. Does is support ATA 33, ATA 66, ATA 100? Does it have integrated RAID? (Note: Get a motherboard with ATA 66 or ATA 100 support. As far as RAID is concerned, if you do disk intensive work like video editing, get RAID support. (Read my article on IDE RAID to understand why) )
Power Any modern motherboard worth having supports ATX power. (Note, power requirements WILL change with the introduction of the Pentium 4 ) If you have an old case, it may be AT not ATX. ( Look at where the power goes into the motherboard. AT uses 2 piece connectors, ATX uses 1 piece connectors )
Bus Speeds Overclockers will want motherboards that support the maximum number of bus speeds. ABIT has always been overclocker friendly, but the newer Asus offerings are also interesting.
What brand should I get To answer that question, read all of my motherboard reviews. ;) Seriously, since a motherboard is so important to the stability of a system, most people should stick to one of 3 vendors, Soyo, ABIT, and Asus. People who are not into overclocking may also want to look at Tyan and Intel motherboards. Whatever you do, stay away from brands like Matsonic and PC Chips. The hassle of an unstable platform simply isn't worth saving a few dollars.
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Member: Steve Larrison
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