Beginner\'s Guide to Motherboard Selection

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Hy, i'm new to this forum, actualy this is my first post... I've been building computers as a hobby for some good years now, and formed some oppinions about motherboard layout, etc...

I don't know about you guys, but these days i find it very hard to choose a well layed out motherboard and still have full use of all expansion slots available... Most boards these days have 2 or 3 PCI slots, and most of the times if u have a graphics card with dual slot cooler, this renders a PCI slot ussless... Same thing regarding PCI3 x1 slots...

And another issue i have stumbled across: I always try to leave an empty slot beetwen the video card and the nearest expansion card, in order to ensure good airflow to the video card... Having them installed next to eachother lead to high temperatures in the case... sometimes iven to stabilty issues... Of course, the problem ca be fixed with some additional case fans, but i often found my self working with a case that had no way of mountind a fan on the side pannel, as i found out that this is the optimum solution in this scenario.

For example... if i want to build a computer that has 2 or three expansion cards (a TV tunner, a high-end sound card, sometimes an additional network card) and a powerfull video card, that iver generates a lot of heat or has a dual slot cooler, my choice of moterboards is quite limited, taking into account that not all the model presented on the manufacturers website are available in retail stores in my area...

For example, for a sk 939 based computer... Asus A8N-E seems to me one of the best choices... or MSI's K8N Neo series... Or, for sk 754 Asrock K8SLI eSATAII because the primary graphics PCIe slot is the one closest to the CPU...

Anyway.. one thought has crossed my mind these past few months while building several computers.. it's a crazy though but i'll say it any way: most dual graphics slot moterboards shoul be at leas one more slot longer... in order to fullfill the need of computer builders that have to build high-end computers, that do not only have graphics power, but a high-end sound card an TV tunner as well...

Any way.. maybe my building ideeas are to tight and need to loosen up a bit... but one more thing i hate to do is to place a card for processing analog signals(TV tunner, sound card) near a graphics card beacuse of the heat and high frequencies... maybe i'm to freekysh about his.. but i strive to perfection... and every detail counts....

Anyway... great article, keep up the good work...
 
You make a good point, so let me hammer it home: MOST of today's boards have five or six slots. Seven are possible. A little history might help:

I first noticed the reduction in slot numbers when Intel wanted to make room around Slot-1 processors. A bunch of reviewers said "Hey, this is great, I can open my DIMM latches with the graphics card installed!"

Well, manufacturers listened and gradually started removing slots, leaving the greatest slot availability on business-type motherboards and putting the fewest slots on enthusiast boards. I've seen 5-slot boards with reviewers saying "Hey, even more room!" These guys just don't care, and probably come from a gaming background where the only cards desired are video cards.

A few reviewers have taken notice of the disappearing slots, and quite frankly, Tom's is one of the better sites for not promoting the use of fewer slots on full-sized boards. The Asus board used as an example has all seven slots, three of which are usefull (an x1 and two PCI) in addition to two double-wide graphics cards.
 
"Leading PCI Express chipsets for Athlon 64 processors include the ATI Crossfire Xpress 3200"

I want to know how this chipset SUDDENLY became a leading chipset . . ., Im sure its decent, but its been around what ? 5 days ?

I do not care if its made by ATI, well I do sort of, the fact that they havent been in the buisness anywhere near as long as nVidia (making chipsets), and watching sales of motherboards with these chipsets tells me they are no where near a leading chipset, I do not care how well they perform.

[edit]

Lets not forget ATI's dubious past concerning driver support, this is the main reason why I'll pesonally steer clear of ANYTHING ATI, let alone chipsets . . . lets be glad they dont write the BIOS, oh wait . . .do they ? *shudder*
 
In the year or so I've been learning about PCs (necessary now that I own one in addition to two Macintoshi)
Click to expand...

Owning a PC doesn't require any knowledge of hardware. Hell, owning a PC doesn't require any knowledge at all. Just look at the people who buy Dells.

lol
 
In the year or so I've been learning about PCs (necessary now that I own one in addition to two Macintoshi)
Click to expand...

Owning a PC doesn't require any knowledge of hardware. Hell, owning a PC doesn't require any knowledge at all. Just look at the people who buy Dells.

lol

Owning a PC doesnt require any knowledge indeed, nor does making posts on these forums . . .
 
In the year or so I've been learning about PCs (necessary now that I own one in addition to two Macintoshi)
Click to expand...

Owning a PC doesn't require any knowledge of hardware. Hell, owning a PC doesn't require any knowledge at all. Just look at the people who buy Dells.

lol

Owning a PC doesnt require any knowledge indeed, nor does making posts on these forums . . .

Waking up doesnt require any knowledge, but it's still hard.
 
You make a good point, so let me hammer it home: MOST of today's boards have five or six slots. Seven are possible. A little history might help:

I first noticed the reduction in slot numbers when Intel wanted to make room around Slot-1 processors. A bunch of reviewers said "Hey, this is great, I can open my DIMM latches with the graphics card installed!"

Well, manufacturers listened and gradually started removing slots, leaving the greatest slot availability on business-type motherboards and putting the fewest slots on enthusiast boards. I've seen 5-slot boards with reviewers saying "Hey, even more room!" These guys just don't care, and probably come from a gaming background where the only cards desired are video cards.

A few reviewers have taken notice of the disappearing slots, and quite frankly, Tom's is one of the better sites for not promoting the use of fewer slots on full-sized boards. The Asus board used as an example has all seven slots, three of which are usefull (an x1 and two PCI) in addition to two double-wide graphics cards.
Click to expand...

The 'history lesson' isnt needed guy, manufactuers just need to start making motherboards using a little more thought. Rendering a motherboard semi useless because someone wants to take advantage of a key feature (in this case SLI) is pretty stupid IMO.
 
also i don not know of these driver problems you speak of but do know people whi have been using hardware for a while always say that nvidia and ati are as bad as each other for driver support and that as you said they are "past" problems.
.
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And I am the newb, heh.
 
C'mon guys.. i hate when flames are started.. Ati is better.. nvidia is better... Especialy when there's no clear winner in all situation.. and i put gamming aside as is one of the last things i take into account when building a computer, unless it's for a hardcore gammer.. or the customer demands it..

Anyway.. i feel better now knowing that i'm not that freekysh about mobos layout...

And speaking abou chipsets.. in my book SIS comes before nVidia... Maybe it's about a few procents behind nVidia.. but i've been using theese chipsets for some time now and they have never let me down... never had a problem with any of the systems i built with mobos using theese chipsets.. unlike nvidia or via based mobos which gave me a hard time from time to time...

Anyway... one chipset or another is better depending on what u wanna do with you computer...

I think nvidia has to work a liitle bit on theyr MCPs (SATA... USB, etc) as ULI SB's managed a better performance that nvidia's...

I have never used ATI mobos but from what i read in reviews accros the web, ATI NB + ULI SB performs better that Nvidia... (I don't want to start any flames.. this is just my oppinion). If SIS based boards would be paired up with a more decent SB that would provide support for SATAII and HD audio in my oppinion it would be a nvidia killer providing a much more better price/performance ratio for people that want a good computer for everyday use not a hardcore gaming rig... HyperStreaming from SIS realy makes a difference when having lot of windows opened and diffrent programs try to acces the ram and the swap... the computer feels much more responsive... no short frezes or lags...

Anyway... getting back to the point... i think we should try and make manufacturers more aware that not every body wants dual graphics... some people need a good, flexible computer that will suit theyr needs.. maybe today i wanna go crazy an put two graphics cards in SLI or crossfire... maybe tommorow i wanna put a high-end sound card to digitize my audio tapes collection and so on... And don't tell me about external devices as most of the times these are more expensive and take more space on the desk or whatever...

There are still a lot of things to discuss about this topic.. and i repeat... all i said above is just my oppinion on things and i don't want to star any flames... I write based on what i used, read and experimented over the years...

i'dd realy like to think that maybe we, the end users, could make a difference in the way hardware is designed to better suit our needs and not just the enthusiasts needs...
 
@whomever

Well, boards are cramped as it is today. Everything is packed into that 12 by 9 inch rectangle. I hate it when manufacturers leave out a PCI slot and put in a perfectly useless PCIe x1 slot....

I do see where you are coming from, blue. I kind of wish there were more office friendly, as in features and price, chipsets....

~Ibrahim~
 
What I'd really like to see is specific recommendation. People say that one chipset is better for some tasks, and another is better for other tasks, but they never say what those tasks are. Which leaves people looking for solutions to a problem.

I want a low-power chipset, which I'll admit is fairly esoteric. Still, the information has to be out there somewhere, but finding it is a problem.

And then the differences get exaggerated. Someone says this chipset is much faster than another, I go find benchmarks, and the difference is a few percent. What matters to one doesn't matter that much to another, but if a certain chipset is biased toward particular tasks, that would be useful to know.
 
the only use i found for a PCIex1 slot is for ATI's 550 and 650 based tunner available for this slot and for storage adaptors... And once, i think i saw a gigabit ethernet adapter for PCIeX1 slot... and that kinda sums it up... One slot should be fine... as lond as it's not possitioned near the PCIex16 slot so that when u plug in a dual slot cooler graphics card u will still be able to use that slot.. otherwise it's plain ussless...

i think a free space underneath a video card, equivalent to a slot, should become a standard as cards these days disipate more and more heat or more often use dual slot coolers... back in the days of AGP several manufacturers did that... and i very much aprociated it...

generaly i hate when the fate of a chipset is decided by marketing reasons and not based on performance and features...

For example, in my oppinion the best sk 754 board would be Asrock K8SLI eSATAII beacuse of the feature set, it's layout and number of slots and also it's price... To bad that other manufacturers did not chose to use this chipset.. same fate has SIS 755, 755FX and 756 chipsets as tey are perfectly good chipsets for all purpose computers... it's true that sk 754 is aleady dieing but i consider it as a perfecly good low cost platform for AMD... sk 939 is still a bit expensive, as there are no budget processors available for this socket... and AM2 socket is in his infancy... the DDR2 memory controller needs more optimizing as many reviewers said the havin sk AM2 realy pays off for clock speeds above 2.4GHZ... The only pozitive thig about sk AM2 is the unified sk, for both value and performance processors... the availability of lower power consumption processors... that's about it...

Somewhere... some one made a mistake... it seems like more and more focus is given to enthusiat users rather than the user who has in mind a more broader variety of uses for the computer but stil needs a good performance...

And then the differences get exaggerated. Someone says this chipset is much faster than another, I go find benchmarks, and the difference is a few percent. What matters to one doesn't matter that much to another, but if a certain chipset is biased toward particular tasks, that would be useful to know.
Click to expand...

When i'll have a liitle more time on my hand i'll try and make a clasification of chipsets... I build systems with AMD processors and i will refer only to chipsets for these processors... Maybe someone else will do the same thing for intel chipsets...
 
C'mon guys.. i hate when flames are started.. Ati is better.. nvidia is better... Especialy when there's no clear winner in all situation.. and i put gamming aside as is one of the last things i take into account when building a computer, unless it's for a hardcore gammer.. or the customer demands it..

Anyway.. i feel better now knowing that i'm not that freekysh about mobos layout...

And speaking abou chipsets.. in my book SIS comes before nVidia... Maybe it's about a few procents behind nVidia.. but i've been using theese chipsets for some time now and they have never let me down... never had a problem with any of the systems i built with mobos using theese chipsets.. unlike nvidia or via based mobos which gave me a hard time from time to time...

Anyway... one chipset or another is better depending on what u wanna do with you computer...

I think nvidia has to work a liitle bit on theyr MCPs (SATA... USB, etc) as ULI SB's managed a better performance that nvidia's...

I have never used ATI mobos but from what i read in reviews accros the web, ATI NB + ULI SB performs better that Nvidia... (I don't want to start any flames.. this is just my oppinion). If SIS based boards would be paired up with a more decent SB that would provide support for SATAII and HD audio in my oppinion it would be a nvidia killer providing a much more better price/performance ratio for people that want a good computer for everyday use not a hardcore gaming rig... HyperStreaming from SIS realy makes a difference when having lot of windows opened and diffrent programs try to acces the ram and the swap... the computer feels much more responsive... no short frezes or lags...

Anyway... getting back to the point... i think we should try and make manufacturers more aware that not every body wants dual graphics... some people need a good, flexible computer that will suit theyr needs.. maybe today i wanna go crazy an put two graphics cards in SLI or crossfire... maybe tommorow i wanna put a high-end sound card to digitize my audio tapes collection and so on... And don't tell me about external devices as most of the times these are more expensive and take more space on the desk or whatever...

There are still a lot of things to discuss about this topic.. and i repeat... all i said above is just my oppinion on things and i don't want to star any flames... I write based on what i used, read and experimented over the years...

i'dd realy like to think that maybe we, the end users, could make a difference in the way hardware is designed to better suit our needs and not just the enthusiasts needs...
Click to expand...

Yeah I remember thinking that non dual graphics enthusiast boards would be cool, but I think we need both, and both layed out WELL. FOr me, I'm partial to ABIT boards, but they are terrible at layout alot of times. The main reason I HAVE to have ABIT is, well, I've been using ABIT boards exclusively for 7-8 years, and the only one that failed, failed because the user would continuely unplug, and replug the keyboard while the system was running (not good . . .) I still have an ABIT here thats 6 years old, and still running hard, even though I had to replace a few caps on it after about 5 years.
 
Gigabytes RAM DISK card is PCIE also I believe , but yeah, would be nice to have a PCIE sound card, TV tuner, etc. Not that these things in in PCIE would really Improve performance all that much, but I personally have been wanting to ditch PCI for a long long time.
 
Gigabytes RAM DISK card is PCIE also I believe , but yeah, would be nice to have a PCIE sound card, TV tuner, etc. Not that these things in in PCIE would really Improve performance all that much, but I personally have been wanting to ditch PCI for a long long time.
Click to expand...


Good points there. I also feel the same about PCI, i believe it's an outdated piece of technology that needs throwing away.
 
Gigabytes RAM DISK card is PCIE also I believe , but yeah, would be nice to have a PCIE sound card, TV tuner, etc. Not that these things in in PCIE would really Improve performance all that much, but I personally have been wanting to ditch PCI for a long long time.
Click to expand...


Good points there. I also feel the same about PCI, i believe it's an outdated piece of technology that needs throwing away.

*points to floppy, and IDE ports* Well, unfortunately IDE is still needed since most DvD / CD readers / writter are still IDE, another thing 'we' need to fix 😉

[edit]

There are probably atleast a few things I'm un-aware of that probably need ditching too, but an Electronics Engineer friend of mine pointed me to an article in one of his EE magazines, and said that we may not have CPUs that run on a clock cycle (clockless CPUs), in the semi near future. I am un-sure how that would work, but it sounds pretty interresting . . .
 
Oh, and I'm still waiting on AMD to run a FSB at the same speed as the core. As a matter of fact, would be good to have ALL sub systems running at full core speed, but somehow, I dont think thats going to happen anytime soon.
 
Oh, and I'm still waiting on AMD to run a FSB at the same speed as the core. As a matter of fact, would be good to have ALL sub systems running at full core speed, but somehow, I dont think thats going to happen anytime soon.
Click to expand...

AMD ditched the FSB with the demise of K7 and switched to HTT instead. So if you're hoping for an AMD chip with the same FSB speed as core speed, im afriad you'll be disappointed.
 
Oh, and I'm still waiting on AMD to run a FSB at the same speed as the core. As a matter of fact, would be good to have ALL sub systems running at full core speed, but somehow, I dont think thats going to happen anytime soon.
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AMD ditched the FSB with the demise of K7 and switched to HTT instead. So if you're hoping for an AMD chip with the same FSB speed as core speed, im afriad you'll be disappointed.

I think if you'll look a bit closer, you'll see that even modern AMD systems still use a 2.0 GHZ FSB(well, atleast non sempron), and this is pretty dahmed close to what thier max CPU speed is (only another what ? 800MHZ to go ? ) Anyhow, I wont be writing it off, even if for the near future they dont implement it, eventually I'm thinking they will.
 
Front-Side Bus Replacement

The primary use for HyperTransport is to replace the front-side bus, which is currently different for every machine (or some set of them). For instance, a Pentium cannot be plugged into a PCI bus. In order to expand the system, the front-side bus must connect through adaptors for the various standard buses, like AGP or PCI. These are typically included in the respective controller functions, namely the northbridge and southbridge.

A similar computer implemented with HyperTransport is more flexible, as well as being faster. A single PCI<->HyperTransport adaptor chip will work with any HyperTransport enabled microprocessor and allow the use of PCI cards with these processors. For example, the NVIDIA nForce chipset uses HyperTransport to connect its north and south bridges.
Click to expand...

Ok, so whats the difference here ? From what I can tell, other than chipset compliance, nothing.

HyperTransport comes in three versions — 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 — which run from 200MHz to 2.6GHz (compared to PCI at either 33 or 66 MHz). It is also a DDR or "Double Data Rate" bus, meaning it sends data on both the rising and falling edges of the clock signal. This allows for a maximum data rate of 5200 MTransfers/s per pair running at 2.6GHz; this frequency is auto-negotiated.

HyperTransport supports an auto-negotiated bus width, based on two 2-bit lines to 32-bit lines. The full-sized, full-speed, 32-bit bus in each direction has a transfer rate of 20,800 MByte/s (2*(32/8)*2600), making it much faster than many existing standards. Buses of various widths can be mixed together into a single application (for example, 2x8 instead of 1x16), which allows for higher speed buses between main memory and the CPU, and lower speed buses among peripherals as appropriate. The technology also has much lower latency than other solutions.

HyperTransport is packet-based, with each packet always consisting of a set of 32-bit words, regardless of the physical width of the bus interconnect. The first word in a packet is always a command word. If a packet contains an address, then the last 8 bits of the command word are chained with the next 32-bit word in order to make a 40-bit address. An additional 32-bit control packet is allowed to be prepended when 64-bit addressing is required. The remaining 32-bit words in a packet are the data payload. Transfers are always padded to a multiple of 32 bits, regardless of their actual length.

HyperTransport packets enter the bus in segments known as bit times. The number of bit times that it necessitates depends on the width of the bus. HyperTransport can be used for generating system management messages, signaling interrupts, issuing probes to adjacent devices or processors, and general I/O and data transactions. There are usually two different kinds of write commands that can be used - posted and non-posted. Posted writes are ones that do not require a response from the target. This is usually used for high bandwidth devices such as UMA traffic or DMA transfers. Non-posted writes require a response from the receiver in the form of a "target done". Reads also cause the receiver to generate a read response.

HyperTransport also greatly facilitates power management as it is ACPI compliant. This means that changes processor sleep states (C states) can signal changes in device states (D states), e.g. powering off disks when the CPU goes to sleep.

Electrically, HyperTransport/LDT is similar to Low Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) operating at 2.5V.

There has been marketing confusion between the use of HT referring to HyperTransport and the use of HT to refer to Intel's Hyper-Threading feature of their Pentium 4 based microprocessors. Hyper-Threading is known as Hyper-Threading Technology (HTT) or HT-Technology. Because of this potential for confusion, the HyperTransport Consortium always uses the written out form: "HyperTransport".
Click to expand...

Here is what I'm talking about, HT (Hypertransport) technology, it is capable of 2.6GHZ, or 5200 MTs/s. CPU cores run close to this range, and while it may not techicly be a front side bus, for all intents and purposes, atleast where I'm concerned, it is.

Anyhow, all I'm saying if CPU,bus speeds, memory, add-on cards, etc can all communicate at a 1:1 ratio, we would be alot better off, I could care less wtf they call it, its still a communications 'bus'.
 
Front-Side Bus Replacement

The primary use for HyperTransport is to replace the front-side bus, which is currently different for every machine (or some set of them). For instance, a Pentium cannot be plugged into a PCI bus. In order to expand the system, the front-side bus must connect through adaptors for the various standard buses, like AGP or PCI. These are typically included in the respective controller functions, namely the northbridge and southbridge.

A similar computer implemented with HyperTransport is more flexible, as well as being faster. A single PCI<->HyperTransport adaptor chip will work with any HyperTransport enabled microprocessor and allow the use of PCI cards with these processors. For example, the NVIDIA nForce chipset uses HyperTransport to connect its north and south bridges.
Click to expand...

Ok, so whats the difference here ? From what I can tell, other than chipset compliance, nothing.

HyperTransport comes in three versions — 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 — which run from 200MHz to 2.6GHz (compared to PCI at either 33 or 66 MHz). It is also a DDR or "Double Data Rate" bus, meaning it sends data on both the rising and falling edges of the clock signal. This allows for a maximum data rate of 5200 MTransfers/s per pair running at 2.6GHz; this frequency is auto-negotiated.

HyperTransport supports an auto-negotiated bus width, based on two 2-bit lines to 32-bit lines. The full-sized, full-speed, 32-bit bus in each direction has a transfer rate of 20,800 MByte/s (2*(32/8)*2600), making it much faster than many existing standards. Buses of various widths can be mixed together into a single application (for example, 2x8 instead of 1x16), which allows for higher speed buses between main memory and the CPU, and lower speed buses among peripherals as appropriate. The technology also has much lower latency than other solutions.

HyperTransport is packet-based, with each packet always consisting of a set of 32-bit words, regardless of the physical width of the bus interconnect. The first word in a packet is always a command word. If a packet contains an address, then the last 8 bits of the command word are chained with the next 32-bit word in order to make a 40-bit address. An additional 32-bit control packet is allowed to be prepended when 64-bit addressing is required. The remaining 32-bit words in a packet are the data payload. Transfers are always padded to a multiple of 32 bits, regardless of their actual length.

HyperTransport packets enter the bus in segments known as bit times. The number of bit times that it necessitates depends on the width of the bus. HyperTransport can be used for generating system management messages, signaling interrupts, issuing probes to adjacent devices or processors, and general I/O and data transactions. There are usually two different kinds of write commands that can be used - posted and non-posted. Posted writes are ones that do not require a response from the target. This is usually used for high bandwidth devices such as UMA traffic or DMA transfers. Non-posted writes require a response from the receiver in the form of a "target done". Reads also cause the receiver to generate a read response.

HyperTransport also greatly facilitates power management as it is ACPI compliant. This means that changes processor sleep states (C states) can signal changes in device states (D states), e.g. powering off disks when the CPU goes to sleep.

Electrically, HyperTransport/LDT is similar to Low Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) operating at 2.5V.

There has been marketing confusion between the use of HT referring to HyperTransport and the use of HT to refer to Intel's Hyper-Threading feature of their Pentium 4 based microprocessors. Hyper-Threading is known as Hyper-Threading Technology (HTT) or HT-Technology. Because of this potential for confusion, the HyperTransport Consortium always uses the written out form: "HyperTransport".
Click to expand...

Here is what I'm talking about, HT (Hypertransport) technology, it is capable of 2.6GHZ, or 5200 MTs/s. CPU cores run close to this range, and while it may not techicly be a front side bus, for all intents and purposes, atleast where I'm concerned, it is.

Anyhow, all I'm saying if CPU,bus speeds, memory, add-on cards, etc can all communicate at a 1:1 ratio, we would be alot better off, I could care less wtf they call it, its still a communications 'bus'.

As i said, HTT is NOT the same as FSB.
 
I didn't realise it was incorrect wording, i believed you mistaken.

I now stand corrected.
Click to expand...

No, I was wrong for using the incorrect acronym, sorry for my mistake, I just thought that perhaps I was going to learn something :)
 
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