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Motherboards, Anyone?

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

When deciding upon a PC’s configuration, the processor normally heads the

list. It is, however, not the only deciding factor. An equally important factor

is the motherboard, which governs which processors will fit on it. The

motherboard also decides the other capabilities of your machine, such as its

upgradability, performance, and features. Given its importance, we’ll look at

the various motherboards available in the market to help you choose the right

one. We’ll also share with you the information that we found when we tested 27

motherboards in PCQ Labs.

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Final scores 

Boards with external graphics/Socket A boards:
Features 200
Performance 100
Price 100
Total 400
Here, a user would expect a certain level of performance from the board, and would be willing to pay the price for it. That’s why more attention would be paid to the features.
Boards with onboard graphics:
Features 100
Performance 200
Price 200
Total 500
Here, a buyer would be very price sensitive. At the same time he would want the best performance, while features would take a back seat

All motherboards can be classified into two broad categories: those that have

integrated graphics, and those that let you add your own graphics card. Earlier,

graphics cards would fit into the PCI slot on the motherboard. This trend was

later discontinued with the introduction of the AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port)

slot. AGP gave dedicated bandwidth to the graphics card, resulting in much

better performance. With the growing popularity of AGP, Intel integrated this

function in its chipsets, called the i810. Motherboards based on this chipset

didn’t have an external graphics slot, making it impossible for anyone to

upgrade to a better graphics card. Other players like SiS have also brought out

similar boards in the market.

Whereas motherboards with integrated graphics can be used for routine office

work, they’re not suitable for graphics’ intensive work. For this, there are

boards with AGP slots that let you add a graphics card of your choice. Boards

based on the Via chipset are quite popular in this category, be they for AMD or

Intel-based processors. Intel also introduced another category of boards

recently, based on the 815 chipset. These boards have both built-in graphics as

well as an AGP slot.

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Intel-based boards now come with Socket 370, which can take either a Celeron

or a PIII processor. AMD-based boards have what’s called the Socket A, which

can take either a Duron or an Athlon processor. The advantage of this feature is

that you could buy an entry-level processor, and later upgrade it to a

higher-end one without having to change the motherboard. However, you can’t

have any cross linkages here, meaning you can’t use an Athlon board to house a

PIII and vice versa.

As we can see, boards are becoming integrated with greater functionality. You

could buy a board with an entry-level processor and use its onboard graphics. As

your needs grow, you could change to a better processor and add a graphics card

to turn it into a high-end mean machine.

Other important factors in a motherboard are the features it provides such as

onboard sound, number of PCI slots, and maximum RAM. We took all these factors

into account when testing the boards.

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Test criteria

Going by the market trend, we divided the motherboards into two parts–those

with onboard graphics (entry-level boards), and those with external capabilities

(high-end boards). We tested the 815 chipset-based boards, which had both

capabilities, in both categories.

For boards with external graphics, we used an Asus V7700 graphics card having

a GeForce 2 GTS and 32 MB VRAM. A PIII/800 MHz processor, 128 MB SDRAM, and

Seagate Barracuda ATA II hard drive accompanied this. Win 98 SE and Windows 2000

Professional were used for the tests. For boards with onboard graphics, we used

a Celeron 600, 64 MB RAM, and the same hard drive as in the other category. Win

98 SE was the OS for benchmarks. For the testing, we had also received some

Socket A boards. We tested these with an 800 MHz Athlon processor, which was

provided to us by Zeta Technologies, Mumbai. Since Socket A boards use a

different processor, we kept these motherboards in a separate category.

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We used our three-axis model of price, performance, and features to compare

all the motherboard and the Brown-Gibson model to calculate the weightages of

all parameters. Here’s a break-up of the parameters we used.

Performance

For the boards with external graphics, the application

distribution and benchmarks used were:

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  1. High-end

    productivity applications: Indy3D from Sense8 and High-end Winstone99

  2. Graphics and gaming

    capabilities: VideoMark 2000, 3DWinbench 2000, and Quake III Arena at

    resolutions of 800x600 and 1,024x768 with both 16 and 32-bit color depths at

    75 Hz refresh rate

  3. Entertainment: Here,

    we used eJay MP3 application to convert a 100 MB WAV file to MP3. The time

    for conversion was recorded

  4. Normal Productivity

    work: Business Winstone99.

For boards with onboard graphics, the application distribution

and benchmarks used were:

  1. Normal productivity

    applications: Business Winstone99

  2. Gaming: 3Dmark2000

  3. Graphics sub-system:

    Videomark2000

  4. Audio performance:

    Only boards with onboard audio were considered in this category. We tested

    their audio capabilities using Audio WinBench. The benchmark measured the

    percentage CPU utilization caused by the audio sub-system.

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Features

Motherboards are getting richer in features. You have to know what they are

to decide their importance. We considered the following features in their order

of importance.

1.  Setup:







a. Quality of manuals: A good quality manual is a must-have for all

motherboards as it tells you about its capabilities






b. Ease of installation: A motherboard should have a jumper-free mode so that it
automatically detects your processor speeds and RAM. Its layout should be

non-obstructive. We gave the motherboards with driver CDs that provided

automated installation more marks. Similarly, motherboards with cables other

than the bare minimum for hard drive, floppy drive, USB, etc, were awarded more

points

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  1. Ports:

    Given the popularity of USB devices, a board must have at least two USB

    ports. Anything more than that got extra points, provided the board gave

    connector cables with them. PS/2 ports are also important as they make

    connecting your mouse and keyboard a breeze. Boards with two PS/2 ports got

    the highest marks

  2. PCI slots:

    Motherboards should have at least three PCI slots. Despite the ongoing

    integration of critical elements on the motherboard, there are a lot of PCI

    devices in the market. So boards with more than three PCI slots were awarded

    more points

  3. ATA 66/100

    support
    : ATA 100 drives are becoming common, so a motherboard should be

    able to support them. These can give a maximum burst transfer rate of 100

    MB/sec. So boards with ATA100 support got more points

  4. Video: AGP

    2x is the ongoing speed for graphics cards, but AGP 4x is fast becoming

    popular. A board should be ready for it whenever 4x cards become popular

  5. Software

    bundle
    : Most motherboards come with the regular software like drivers,

    an anti-virus utility, and a monitoring utility. Boards that gave anything

    useful over and above these were given more points

  6. Extras:

    Here we considered fringe features like AMR/CNR, and ISA slots. Some boards

    even had other ports for Digital Video Out, TV/LCD out, etc.

Price

Here, the price and warranty of all motherboards were considered.

Anil Chopra

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