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How to Buy a Motherboard

Written by oneself on 3:38 AM


by Jason

The motherboard, or mainboard, is what everything connects to. If the CPU is the brains, then this is the heart and soul of the computer. Everything - from the processor to the hard drive, and even the power supply is going to attach to it. So, purchasing the right motherboard is essential.

Here are some buying tips that will help you choose the right board for you:

* Make sure the Socket Type (or processor Interface type) matches that of your chosen CPU. Remember, the Dual and Quad Core Intel CPUs use Socket 775.
* Make sure the Front Side Bus speed matches or exceeds your processors Front Side Bus. This will vary from 500Mhz up to 1333MHz (or higher).
* Take note of the RAM type (DDR, DDR2, DDR3, Dual Channel, etc...) and its speed. Typically, you'll see Ram advertised as DDR2 Dual-Channel 800MH, just make sure the RAM you have matches your motherboards spec.
* Check how much RAM it supports! One of the most frustrating things is buying a motherboard that supports the fastest RAM, but only 2GB of it.
* Take note if it has AGP or PCI-Express (PCIe) slots. AGP is an older, outdated standard. If the motherboard you're thinking of buying doesn't have any PCIe slots, reconsider your purchase.
* If it has PCI-Express, take note of the number of "x16" slots available - if you want to set up an SLI system you'll need at least PCIe x16 slots (you'll also need to make sure the motherboard is SLI compatible).
* Does it have IDE, SATA, or both? Hard Drives generally come with a SATA connector, so you'll want to make sure your motherboard supports this. If you're getting a modern motherboard, make sure it supports SATA-II (also called SATA-300, or SATA 3.0Gb/s).
* Make note of the form factor - ATX, Mini-ATX, Micro-ATX? This will help you select a case later on, especially if you plan on making a small computer.

With these tips in hand, you'll be well on your way to building your very own computer.

About the Author
Building a computer is easy, but building a gaming computer takes research. Our Build a Gaming Computer guide has all the info you need to build your own rig from the ground up.

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Dueling Duals: ATI Puts SLI into the CrossFire

Written by oneself on 8:14 PM

By: Nicholas Spriggs

Let’s face it. In today’s modern world we like things fast. Fast cars, fast food, and especially fast computers. So when it comes to graphics on today’s PCs, we not only want them to look good, we also want them to perform as fast and as smooth as possible. Luckily ATI and NVIDIA have been engaged in an all out war for the past 5 years, fighting to deliver us faster and more innovative products before their competitor can. Needless to say, I’m in support of this war.

ATI was king of the high end graphics card race for a long time, until NVIDIA recently took a big step ahead of them with their GeForce 7 series. Not to mention that NVIDIA was almost a year ahead in the dual video card market with their SLI technology, leaving ATI even further behind in the race for the PC gaming market. However, ATI is striking back by releasing their much delayed R520 GPU (now dubbed the X1000 series) and offering their own dual video card solution, named CrossFire.

The CrossFire technology is very similar to SLI in that it allows your computer to use two graphics cards instead of one. In theory, this could accelerate your graphics processing power by two. In reality the performance gain, although good, is usually nowhere near twice the amount that a single card produces. Still, the main concern for high end gamers and enthusiasts is having every last drop of performance that is available, and with CrossFire, that’s exactly what you get.

The CrossFire has several distinct advantages over SLI. The main advantage is that unlike SLI, you don’t have to pair up two of the exact same cards. Instead you only need two cards that are within the same series. For example, owners of a Radeon X800 CrossFire Edition card can use any other card in the X800 series. If the slave card (the non-crossfire card) is of a lesser ability than the master card (the CrossFire card) it will automatically downgrade to the same ability of the slave. This should help encourage those who have already invested in a high end ATI card to upgrade to a CrossFire system, since they would only need to buy the appropriate CrossFire card to upgrade. However, buyers should be sure that their motherboard is equipped with ATI’s Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire chipset, since it is a requirement for CrossFire.

The CrossFire technology also has a wider compatibility range than SLI. Wherein SLI only works with certain compatible games, CrossFire works on them all. In addition, the CrossFire supports four rendering modes, while SLI only supports two. The one notable mode introduced on the ATI cards is the CrossFire Super AA (Anti-Aliasing) mode. This special mode combines super AA and multi-sample AA and offers up to 14x AA in comparison to NVIDIA’s best of 8x AA. This makes games look more crisp and clear, instead of blocky and pixilated.

One of the biggest problems that ATI has to face is that a lot of enthusiast chose to go with SLI, instead of waiting for ATI to come up with a dual card solution. ATI lost a lot of potential market share by allowing NVIDIA’s SLI to remain unchallenged for so long. However, there are many loyal ATI fans that have remained vigilant, and will undoubtedly embrace ATI’s CrossFire.

So even though ATI bided it’s time, it looks as if it was well worth the wait. ATI not only offers a more powerful selection of video cards, but also a superior dual card solution. Still, SLI is well established and offers higher resolutions than the CrossFire. Although CrossFire may be superior in many ways, SLI is still a very strong competitor. So if you’ve been considering going dual card, now is a great time to do it. It’s much better than fast food.

ATI has finally released it’s dual card solution, CrossFire. With the release of CrossFire, ATI hopes to recapture the high end market that NVIDIA had stolen with it’s GeForce 7 series and their SLI technology. We’ll take a look at how the two technologies compare and which one is superior.

Nicholas Spriggs at desktop-computer-guide.com provides up to date information in the computer and tech field. For more info subscribe to DCG Ezine, or check us out at desktop-computer-guide.com/video-card.html

Article Source: http://www.eArticlesOnline.com

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