Explaining Chipsets, the Defining Piece of Your Motherboard - Chipset Manufacturers
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When choosing a chipset and a motherboard, keep in mind that not every chipset works with every CPU. If you have your heart set on a particular CPU (or a CPU produced by a particular company), you need to make your choices based on that. Even so, as already mentioned, the chipset will have a huge effect on your computer’s performance, so it may be best to consider the merits of both the chipset and the CPU at the same time, and keep an open mind.
Intel, of course, is a major manufacturer of chipsets. In fact, the company manufactures so many different chipsets that it can be confusing to try to keep them all straight. The chipsets are divided into performance, mainstream, and value versions for desktops and laptops. Intel also makes chipsets for workstations, servers, and other electronics.
AMD also makes chipsets, most notably its AMD-8000 series for its Opteron processor.
VIA Technologies is a Taiwanese manufacturer of chipsets. It is a fabless manufacturer, meaning that it researches and develops its chipsets in house, then contracts the actual manufacturing to third parties. While some people have criticized VIA chipsets for being less stable or not playing as well with hardware, many more find that they function perfectly, and some consider its chipsets to be the best non-Intel alternative.
Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) is another Taiwanese chipset manufacturer. Before 2000, SiS chipsets suffered with a reputation for poor performance and compatibility issues. Since then, SiS has gotten its act together somewhat; while its chipsets still do not offer many features, they are cheap and reasonably stable. SiS gained a market advantage from being one of only two companies initially licensed by Intel to make chipsets for the Pentium 4.
nVidia is know for its graphics cards and graphics chipsets. Lately, it came out with the nForce3 and the nForce4, the latter for both AMD and Intel CPUs. These appear to be full chipsets, not simply for graphics.
ATi, a rival graphics card and graphics chipset manufacturer, also makes full chipsets. These are produced under the Radeon Xpress brand. Some users have complained that ATi software and hardware can both be flaky.
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