Things to consider before buying a motherboard
Nov 28 '00
Why wont it fit in the hole?
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The First and most important thing you have to know before you decide which motherboard is best for you, is what type of Processor (CPU) are you going to be using. Without this knowledge you cannot make a decision on your motherboard since there are many different types of board and they do not support lots of different types of CPU's. The following boards are currently in production and the CPU’s that are supported by them.
Socket 7 - Intel Pentium, AMD K6-2, Cyrix MII
Slot 1 - Intel PII cartridges, Intel PIII cartridges
Slot A - AMD Athlon cartridges
Socket 370 - Intel Celeron, Intel Pentiums III (flip chip), VIA Cyrix III
Socket A - AMD Athlon Thunderbird, AMD Duron.
Now you have decided what type of motherboard you require you will need to get down to a few more specifics.
Catch the Bus
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If you see motherboard specifications you will see that have rated BUS speeds, the Bus as you might expect is a method of transport, only that this bus is the transport of communication between your components and you CPU and memory etc. Certain components such as CPU's and Memory require certain Bus speeds to work at their optimum performance.
The higher the Bus speed the faster the computer can communicate with the rest of its components and so overall system performance is increased. However if your components cant handle higher bus speeds you have to stick to lower ones. The standard is a 100Mhz Bus. Other Bus speeds range from 66Mhz to 133Mhz (the Athlon and Duron have Bus speeds of 200Mhz but only between the CPU and its cache, external bus speed is still 100Mhz).
If you have a Cyrix MII or an Intel Celeron you need a motherboard that supports the 66Mhz bus. If you are using any of the AMD offerings the board needs to support 100Mhz. Some PIII's and some Cyrix III's require the 133Mhz bus.
If you are into overclocking then you will need a high quality board with lots of Bus speed options, preferably going up in small steps.
What’s in a Chipset?
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The motherboard chipset is basically everything your motherboard contains in terms of technical parts. The Chipset is the Brains of the board, redirecting every piece of data to the correct area. The chipset also determines some of the features of the motherboard, for example to speed of the AGP port (1x, 2x or 4x) is determined by the chipset. One motherboard manufacturer can’t use the same chipset as another and get a different AGP port speed. The Chipset can also support things such as onboard sound, video, modems and LAN cards. These boards may seem very appealing, but beware these boards are only ever good for budget machines. The quality of the video for example will be very limited and will often use the system memory as its own.
A different chipset can mean a difference in speed. Some chipsets are quicker than others and have more features, you will know which are which because you will pay more for the good ones. You get what you pay for in the computer business; less money always means cuts somewhere else.
Time to expand
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Something to watch for if you are upgrading are the expansion slots. If you currently have 2 ISA components and are not intending on getting rid of any of them, then you must make sure that your new motherboard has 2 ISA available to it. This is the same with PCI slots the AGP slots and the memory.
If you have the older style SIMMS in your machine you should check that there are still SIMM slots in your new board. A better solution would be to ditch the SIMMS and buy a DIMM instead very few boards have SIMM slots now and the memory will only slow the system down. Its very nice is there is more room than you need in terms of expansion slots because; well in case you want to expand, which you more than likely will.
UDMA/ATA
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UDMA (Ultra Dynamic Memory Access) and ATA (AT Attachment), these terms refer to the speed in which IDE devices are able to transfer data. UDMA 33 or ATA 33 means that one IDE channel can handle 33Mb/s transfer rate. In terms of your motherboard all you really need to know is if you have a UDMA 66 Hard Drive you want your board to support UDMA 66. Although UDMA and ATA are backwards compatible so your UDMA 33 drive will work on a UDMA 66 channel as long as a UDMA 66 cable isn’t installed (it causes some problems on a few machines) if you install a UDMA 66 Drive on a UDMA 33 channel then the drive will simply be limited to 33Mb/s.
The last thing to say is that if you are going for socket 7 then you might need to choose between AT and ATX style, this will depend on your case, if you have an ATX case then you need an ATX motherboard, likewise with AT.
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Member: Stevie Orgill
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