Looking at descriptions of various motherboards for sale, I am not
familiar with most of the terms (including good or bad manufacturers).
Is there a FAQ or tutor to help buying a new motherboard?
I'm not looking for gaming or server boards. Just a good quality
home application board.
Thanks for any help.
Jack
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I wish people replying would do a requirements analysis, it is not
good for people wanting to learn about anything. I'm glad you didn't
provide specifics yet..
I recall when I had the same problem.
Regarding quality, that's easy, you just have to know the good makes.
MSI, Abit, Asus,
I found a site with lots of motherboards.. maybe newegg,. You want
them organised in such a way that you see a pattern. e.g. be able to
click on Socket A, and see all socket A MBRDs. I went by SOCKET or
processor.. So, going back in time a bit, Socket A MBRDs were for
the AMD Athlon XP processor. (I had easily found that the AMD Athlon
XP was socket A)
You look at what socket your processor is, and then you see the MBRDs
that support it, you see how much RAM They take, and what RAM they
take.
You can find the right board just by that.
You may find that there are different configurations with , say,
Socket blah MBRDs. I can't recall differences at the moment.. But
there can be, though all support that processor. You realise that the
thing that makes the big difference, is the ** CHIPSET **
Chipset is a very useful general category.. By choosing a chipset, you
then narrow down quite finely what Socket blah MBRD you want, you
start to understand why one Socket blah MBRD has one configuration and
another has another configuration (Different chipsets).
Processors are very important to know about.. P4s and AMD Athlon XPs
relied on an FSB.. You can read explanations of that on overclocking
sites.. (even if you choose not to do any overclocking. You may even
choose to underclock just to test the concept). But those guys like to
make sure they understand what they're doing 'cos overclocking is
possibly or potentially a dangerous thing. And what they're doing
overlaps this concept.
The FSB is a bus on the motherboard. The concept overlaps with knowing
about processors , processor multipliers, knowing WHY the MBRD
supports the speed of processor that it says it does. There's also the
*memory bus*. Whose speed can be set, and that relates to the RAM
speed you buy.. Get the max supported by the MBRD.
CPU-(FSB)--Northbridge-(Memory Bus)--RAM
The Athlon 64, doesn't use an FSB and Memory Bus. It has one Bus or
set of busses, called Hypertransport, connecting CPU and RAM
directly. (I may be a bit wrong there..)
I think that's just enough architecture one has to know about to read
the specification of a MBRD..
As you can see, I did it a long while ago!!
Alot of understanding MBRDs or Processors, is reading specifications,
understanding what is meant.. With processors or MBRDs, it's good to
undertand what people mean when talking of installing them too..
Processors there seems to be some terminology.. I'm not that up on it
myself, but i'm getting there.. my understanding is..
People talk of spreading paste on the core or as some say, spreading
it on the die.. What do they mean..
Now i'll really ramble
Regarding processors.. I know a little of the FE (fetch execute )
cycle.. I have a computing A level background from many years ago.. A
book by heathcote published by Letts, mentioned CPU as consisting of
ALU+CU . Somewhere online I found that Core was ALU+CU..
That's where the FE cycle takes place. Nowadays processors can have
many cores.
An electronic engineering book I ha ve somewhere, maybe called
"digital systems design" , I didn't read much of it but in the
beginning it defines Dice. I can't remember the definition.. The
plural is Dices. Not die. It's to do with the chip. So there's one
dice, many cores.
I guess maybe in the old days of the Athlon XP people said you spread
paste on the Core or Die or perhaps more correctly than die- Dice.
But the P4(same era as the Athlon xp), and perhaps processors since
then, now have an IHS(integrated heat spreader).. Covering the core,
or nowadays, cores. And you spread the paste on that..
--
At the moment, or at least a month ago, people said that the Athlon 64
X2 was a good deal. That's a processor. But that knowledge will help
you find whatever MBRD and processor and RAM you want.. Just look for
MBRDs for the Athlon 64 X2, see what they support. The Athlon 64 X2
3800+ was cheap on newegg, may still be. Or maybe a faster one is
cheaper now
