The Motherboard, Processor, and Memory - AMD, Intel, and That Other One
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Your choice of motherboard directly affects the processor that you can use in your system. Motherboard architecture is built around specific processor families, so you can’t use, say, an Athlon processor in a Pentium 4 motherboard.
Two major players and one dark horse dominate the processor market. Intel, the king of processor sales since the dawn of personal computers, has its Pentium line squared off against AMD’s Athlon processors, which are less expensive than Pentiums and just as powerful. The third brand, Cyrix, is owned by VIA, and while it was a growing force in CPUs a few years ago, it’s since taken a back seat to Intel and AMD.
Cyrix processors aren’t positioned to compete against Intel and AMD wares. They’re designed around small footprint, budget-priced PCs, and they don’t have the horsepower for high-performance gaming.
One aspect that differentiates the various motherboards is their processor sockets. AMD Athlon XP motherboards feature Socket A, a receptacle for Athlon and Athlon XP processors with 462 pins. Current Intel motherboards feature a smaller socket, but one with more pinholes—478 to be exact. That’s not the only difference between the two. The core architectures of the motherboards differ to make them compatible with their CPUs. Athlon processors support an FSB clocked at 333MHz, while newer Pentium 4 CPUs support FSBs running as high as 533MHz. Furthermore, Athlon CPUs support DDR memory, while Intel supports DDR or Rambus modules, depending on the motherboard.
In real-world performance, both AMD and Intel offer cutting-edge solutions. The latest processors at the time of this writing—the Athlon XP 2800+ and the Pentium 4 3.06GHz—are both ultra-high-performance parts. The Pentium 4, paired with Rambus memory, edges out the Athlon, but it does so by a narrow margin and it costs a lot more.
Chipsets The defining factor of a motherboard is its chipset. Intel and AMD each make their own chipsets, and VIA Technologies is a popular third-party chipset manufacturer that makes chipsets for both the Pentium 4 and Athlon XP processor families. Other, less widespread, chipsets are manufactured by SiS and Acer Labs.
A chipset consists mainly of two chips seated on the motherboard. The north-bridge defines the type of CPU and memory with which the board will be compatible, the AGP specification, and the speed of the FSB. The southbridge handles other functions including interfacing with the serial, parallel, and USB controllers; the onboard audio and Ethernet chips; the PCI bus; the IDE channels; and other components.
Intel offers a wide range of chipsets in its 845 and 850 families. The former uses DDR memory, which is more affordable but not quite as fast as the Rambus memory used by the latter. AMD is less aggressive in its chipset manufacturing, making only the 760 chipset for its Athlon XP processors.
VIA, SiS, and Acer chipsets tend to be closer to the cutting edge than the more conservative chipsets from the processor manufacturers. Their products were the first to feature AGP 8X support, for example.
 This chapter is from Build Your Own High Performance Gamers' Mod PC, by Chen and Durham (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2004, ISBN: 0072229012). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today. Buy this book now. |
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