Back to School Shopping Tips - Motherboards and Video Cards
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Motherboards
In most systems the specific motherboard or even the name of the motherboard manufacturer is not available, or willingly shared. The motherboard is the equivalent of the central nervous system of your body as all components and activity is routed through the motherboard.
The motherboard often has a number of externally accessible devices built into it. For example it is not unusual to find systems with integrated Ethernet and audio. Many systems also come with integrated video built into the motherboard rather than as a separate component. It is exceptionally unusual to find a system that has none of the above integrated into its circuits.
The quality of the motherboard also contributes significantly to the overall quality of the system. It is also the most overlooked and short changed component when selecting what devices to include in a computer system, as its details are not as easily marketable as other features of the system.
Video Cards
The video card determines the quality of the video output you will receive on your monitor and the video quality of any games or videos. The strength of the video signal is often measured as 64, 128, 256, or 512 MB. The greater the strength of the video card, the higher the quality of the video output to your monitor.
Video cards are most often produced with the technology from either NVIDIA or ATI, though a significant number of sub-manufacturers license the technology either of these two companies have developed to produce the actual card itself. There are different manufacturers of varying quality -- too many to cover here.
Video cards come as either AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) or PCI-E (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), AGP is an older standard that is still capable of producing excellent graphics. PCI-E is a newly introduced form of connection for video cards that allows for nearly double the amount of data transfer from the system to the video card over AGP. Practically no applications use the data transfer ability of the existing AGP port to its full ability, but the availability of AGP is decreasing as the adoption of PCI-E is becoming more and more the standard over the older AGP.
Additionally, there are certain technologies produced by each of the two companies that may be found in some systems being manufactured. NVIDIA has a technology called SLI (Scalable Link Interface) that allows for the connection of two or more NVIDIA-based video cards together to produce a single output. For example, the combination of two 512 MB NVIDIA SLI video cards will produce the single combined output of nearly a gigabyte of video rendering ability. It is important to note that for an SLI combination to work effectively the cards need to be completely identical. You can't mix and match two different NVIDIA-based video cards in an SLI configuration. Also not all motherboards properly support SLI, so considerable research should be done to ensure that this configuration will actually work with all of the hardware involved.
ATI has its own version of SLI called Crossfire that functions in much the same way.
For the majority of consumers SLI and Crossfire are both advanced functions that are not necessary to the computers for which they're shopping. These functions are more appropriate for advanced users than for the average consumer and are more appropriately designed for serious gamers and graphics designers.
Many motherboards also feature integrated video adapters that are built directly into the motherboard. These integrated video adapters do not have their own independent memory and rely on the system memory to provide them with their rendering power. This can seriously reduce your available "office space" as now a large portion of the office space is being taken up by a monstrous statue occupying valuable real estate.
It is best to avoid these integrated adapters, as the presence of an integrated video adapter often results in the loss of the internal adapter (either AGP or PCI-E) needed to upgrade the video card later on. This also can result in costly repairs when the video adapter needs to be replaced or changed and instead you have to replace a more serious and expensive component. An AGP or PCI-E based video card can be replaced with any other model that uses that physical connector. Motherboards change rather frequently and an older system requiring a motherboard replacement can often result in having to replace the processor and possibly the RAM, as the motherboards that support your older hardware may no longer be available for purchase.
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