HOW TO CHOOSE A MOTHERBOARD

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 Intelbased
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 highspeed
devices, especially main memory and graphics
controller while the Southbridge connects it to lowspeed
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.
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 highend 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.
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.