How to choose a MotherBoard?

BANGALORE, INDIA: Whenever you plan to upgrade your system or purchase a new one, you often get confused with the technical jargon associated with a motherboard? Like the features it should support and the optimum price to pay for your requirements. In this story we provide information on the must-have features on a motherboard. We also tested 24 motherboards from Rs 2-8 k for price, performance and features to help you come up with the right choice

Within a family, a mother provides support to her children and facilitates their growth and performance in the world outside. She is the one responsible for her child's performance: good or bad. Ditto is the case with a PC motherboard, ie mother of all boards. If your system is able to offer all the features and performs well (it's stable and scalable), you would invariably end up praising the motherboard and if it has limited features, and is poor on performance, the poor board would be the first to receive flak. Though you can never replace your mother in real life, thankfully, this is not the case with PCs. So, in case you are planning to upgrade or buy a new motherboard, take out a few minutes from your hectic routine and read through the following. You'll find what's hot and what's not in the market. Here we go!

CPU support

A motherboard forms the base for any system. Each component is directly or indirectly connected to it. Invariably it's the type of motherboard that determines what CPU it can accommodate. The Intel-based motherboard will not accommodate CPU from competing vendors. In fact, there is even a possibility that it might not even accommodate a higher gigs CPU from the same vendor. Generally, all entry-level or budget-range motherboards don't have support for Quad cores; they only support single and dual core processors. Such is the need of various applications today, that you at least need a motherboard that has support for dual core processors. But the big question remains: what processor to go for? With Intel and AMD dishing out so many options, it's always difficult to pick the right one as per your need. Well, if your need is very basic and you simply need a system to run office applications and connect to the Net, then any budget range processor such as Intel Pentium IV, Intel Core Solo or AMD Sempron would suffice. But it's still advisable to opt for a motherboard that has support for dual core processors such as Intel Core 2 Duo, Pentium Dual Core, and AMD Athlon, so that tomorrow when your needs increase you can upgrade the processor rather than entirely changing your motherboard.

With the entry of Quad Core in the desktop segment, we even have motherboards with support for Quad Core processors. In case, you are a professional gamer or a high-end power user, then going for motherboards having support for a Quad Core processor makes sense. Also, there is a move towards the 45 nm technology, so checking whether your motherboard has support for that or not is also an intelligent move. We already have a quad core processor based on this technology from Intel, AMD will be joining the bandwagon soon, and we also believe that processors based on 45nm technology will rule the market in near future. So, this surely is an important criterion when we think in terms of upgradability.

Which chipset?

A chipset is basically a group of ICs or several chips designed to work together. Since, the chipset controls communication amongst the processor and external devices, it plays a crucial role in determining the system's performance. We have two types of chipsets on the motherboard: Northbridge and Southbridge. The Northbridge links the CPU to high-speed devices, especially main memory and graphics controller while the Southbridge connects it to low-speed peripheral buses such as PCI. The chipset limits the CPU types and speeds that the board can take, the type of RAM you can install, and also limits the extras such as integrated graphics, sound and USB 2.0 ports that can be included on the board.

While opting for an entry level motherboard it's always advisable to go for the one with in-built graphics chipset, otherwise you might have to bear the additional cost of a graphics card. Chipset also allows you to configure RAID on your motherboard, but that's common across only high-end motherboards.

It you are planning for a high-end board and will insert your own gaming cards, then choose a board having the latest NVIDIA, Intel or ATI chipsets. This will improve the overall performance. Intel P35 and ATI 790FX are new chipsets that support Quad Core processors and are quite popular these days.

RAM support

Not so long ago DDR2 replaced the DDR, which in turn replaced the SDRAM from the market. Now DDR3 is a threat to DDR2, which is slowly but surely finding its stake in the market. The move towards DDR3 is mainly a step towards Green IT. DDR3 promises to reduce power consumption by nearly 30% as compared to DDR2. It also offers higher bandwidth compared to DDR2, hence power users and gamers will go for DDR3. You will not find support for DDR3 in entry-level motherboards, it is mainly available in the high-end versions. For entry-level DDR2 is good enough.

It is always important to check how many DIMM slots are there in your motherboard. This could be a restricting factor in terms of expandability. Go for boards having at least 2 DIMM slots; they will provide you an economical expandability option. Usually 4 DIMM slots are common across medium and high- end motherboards, which enables them to have more expandability options in terms of total RAM.

Graphics support

You won't need a graphics card if you choose a motherboard with an onboard graphics chipset and when gaming is not your major requirement. But in case you don't have built-in graphics chipset, you will need a graphics card to get display on your monitor. Entry-level or budget range motherboards won't support high-end graphics cards, so you can opt for either NVIDIA GeForce 8400 series, ATI Radeon 2400 series or the 3000 series. They won't be heavy on your pocket and will give you good Vista performance along with Direct X capability.

For medium range or high-end cards, it is beneficial to go for a motherboard that supports SLI or CrossFire, 'coz invariably with more and more challenging games being developed, you'll feel the need to have more than one card. So, look for the board which has SLI and CrossFire support. Also remember, if you are opting for the card having high capability, then invariably you would need a higher power supply. Do check how much power supply your motherboard can bear before buying an expensive card.

Expansion slots

Expansion slots are generally referred to as PCI and PCIe slots via which you can add an additional RAID card (if your chipset has support for it), graphics card, audio Card, LAN card, etc. So, it's important to have more onboard slots, so that your motherboard has more expansion options. We have seen motherboards with just single PCI and PCIe slots, and they are decent enough when it comes to entry-level boards, but for high-end motherboards you'll surely need more than that. For SLI and CrossFire to work you need at least two PCIe slots. So, if expandability is there on your mind, opt for a motherboard that has maximum expandability options.

Storage and IDE

SATA has replaced PATA completely across the entire range of motherboards. What matters is how many SATA connectors does the motherboard support? That will determine how many HDDs you can actually use with the board. Four is generally the norm, but we have seen boards supporting six as well, which is pretty cool. RAID is common across the entire range of motherboards and ensures an extra layer of stability. So while buying a motherboard it's important to consider whether your motherboard has support for RAID or not, as it ensures data safety and enhances performance.

One important thing that we noticed recently was the inability to load OS via your CD ROM drive which is connected to an IDE. Some IDEs don't allow you to boot up your system; you would need to connect an external drive via USB for being able to load your OS on to the HDD. This is a big demerit and should be avoided at all costs. Read the specifications carefully and check whether the motherboard's IDE supports booting or not.

Connectivity options

All motherboards come with a LAN port and some USB ports. See how many USB ports does the board supports? Does it support USB 2.0 connectivity? We have seen boards with about two to six USB ports. The more they have, the better it is, as most of the external peripherals can easily be connected via a USB.

In the high-end boards we have also seen support for WiFi which is a welcome change brought about by Asus. Even HDMI, DVI has become a common feature in the current motherboards, allowing you the opportunity to watch digitally enhanced displays. Just connect your LCDs and enjoy watching a superior digital display. FireWire and e-SATA are some of the other key features that are increasingly being incorporated across motherboards. They provide additional benefits and are a big plus to have in terms of future expandability and scalability.

How We Tested

This month we checked out motherboards that were priced between 2k to 8k. We divided these boards into two categories-those below 4k, we called them entry-level; and those between 4-8k, we called them as the budget boards. We checked out these boards for their performance, features, and pricing. Next month, we'll be featuring high-end motherboards.

Performance

To judge the performance of each board, we ran the following five benchmarks:

PCMark05: A synthetic benchmark that tests 11 different parameters right from OS boot up to 2D tests, HDD tests, etc.

3D Mark 2006: A highly intensive graphics and gaming benchmark, designed to stress the board for its overall graphics capabilities.

POV Ray: To check how good was the CPU's response to render a particular numbers of pixels. Here, the lesser the CPU time, the better.

Cine Bench10: Checks multi-core functionality of boards, since all boards we received supported dual or Quad core.

Business Winston 2002: Runs several office productivity apps like Office suites, browsing, antivirus, etc.

Features

Here, we compared all boards for ten features. These included the number of PCI, and DIMM slots, number of USB ports, whether a board had onboard video or not, and whether it had additional video options like HDMI, and DVI, in addition to the standard VGA port. We also checked whether a board had a Gigabit LAN port, support for 45 nm CPUs, SATA, and audio

support. In SATA, we checked the number of ports, whether they supported RAID, and whether there was a second SATA controller chip as well. In audio support, we looked for the number of channels supported as well as featured like high-definition audio, etc.

Pricing

Here, we simply considered the cost and warranty of each board. Lastly, we used the Brown Gibson model to arrive at the weightages for each aspect of performance, features, and price. The overall weightages assigned to these parameters have been given in the box above.

We feel that even at the entry-level today, price is not the most important criterion for selection. Performance and features are also equally important, which is why you will find that in our weightage we have taken into consideration the importance of performance and features almost equal to that of price.

Hardware Specs

We used an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz processor to test Intel-based boards, while an AMD Athlon 64 X2 1.6 GHz CPU was used to test AMD-based boards. The remaining configuration remained the same and comprised of 1 GB DDRII RAM (533 MHZ), 120 Seagate HDD (7200 RPM), LG Combo Drive, NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT/ 8800GT, and WinXP SP2.

Sub-4k Boards

The Winners

JIN73 M2-VS

When it came to deciding the winner, it was a closely fought battle between Jetway JIN73 M2 – VS and XFX 6230i-7100 boards. The Jetway claimed the top spot largely due to its price; it costs around Rs 1,400 lower than the runner up board-the XFX 6301. The Jetway JIN73 M2-VS supports Intel Core 2 Duo/ Quad and also supports previous generation Intel Pentium 4. It comes with an NVIDIA GeForce 7050/nForce 610i chipset and has 2 DIMM slots for DDRII RAM. The best part about it is that it has all 3 video options available and comes with 6 USB slots, which is the maximum you can get in this range.

In performance, its score in PC Mark05 and 3D Mark06 was just decent. In fact its score of 4682 in PCMark05 was lower than what we have achieved from all three MSI motherboards or XFX 630i-7100. Even in 3D Mark06 its score was lower than the likes of MSI P35 Neo Combo and XFX 630i-7100. Nevertheless, these scores were decent for a board of this class, fetching it a score of 79/100 in performance.

In features, though it had almost everything one can ask for, where it actually lost to XFX was the lack of onboard RAID support. But even then, at this price, you can't expect to get anything better than this.

It's also priced cheaper than most of the other motherboards.

Overall, it's a clear cut winner because it doesn't compromise on features despite such a low price.

XFX 630i-7100

With an overall performance score of 95/100, this board was the top performer in its range. It scored a mammoth 8304 in 3D Mark06, which is pretty high for an entry-level board. Even in PCMark05, a score of 5624 was the highest, with only the MSI Neo Combo coming anywhere close to it. Though its performance in POV Ray wasn't that great, its Business Winston score of 42 was the highest in the category, ensuring that it's good for bothgraphics and business productivity apps.

The board has support for Core 2 Duo and even Quad core processors. It's based on NVIDIA's MCP73U/PVV/D chipset. Though it has only 2 DIMM slots, it offers all three on board video options of VGA, HDMI, and DVI, which is a major plus. It has support for 6 channel audio output and RAID. Probably an additional x16 PCIe slot would have enabled it to offer SLI but then for an entry-level board that's something which is of least importance.

Overall, if you need a board that's a top performer and has all the features you could ask for in an entry-level board, then this board is definitely worth the deal.

Other Contenders

This segment is primarily targeted at users who are on a shoestring budget and aspire for satisfactory performance from a motherboard. While Jetway JIN73 M2 – VS won hands down scoring handsomely on all parameters, we put forward to you the 'also rans' who could not quite make it, but scored pretty well in a specified category. The top runner-up honour goes to our highly recommended test piece, the XFX 630i – 7100 which grabbed the top position in the performance category, scoring highly in PCMark and 3DMark benchmark tests.

PC enthusiasts looking for a motherboard, which is actually worth its price, then they may well have a look at Jetway JM2A 690 – VP. It scored a perfect 100 in the price parameter in our tests. Featuring 4 DIMM slots and USB ports each, with onboard support for audio channels (3), LAN and VGA; this may be a good deal. However, if features are your primary concern, then, at least in the entry level nobody can compete with the MSI P35 Neo Combo. It features 4 slots each for USB, SATA and DIMM. Additionally, it supports 6 audio channels, 2 LAN ports, 1 PCI express and 2 PCI slots. As far as performance is concerned, it returned impressive figures of 5228 and 7897 on PCMark and 3DMark respectively.

Priced at only Rs 2,250, the Jetway J945 GCD MS-A2 is another option you may consider if you are in a budget constraint and still demands good performance with basic features. It scored 3387 on PCMark and 3389 on 3DMark, which is decent enough for an entry- level board. Features are pretty basic with 4 ports for USB and 2 each for DIMM, LAN, SATA and PCI. One PCI express slot also finds a mention here and audio is supported onboard with 3 channels. The lone player from Asus, the M2N-VM DVI was going strong, but still could not perform well enough on all the parameters to claim the top spot. And two of the test boards from ECS lost out mainly due to lack of features and high pricing. If you compare the asked price v/s the features offered, you would inadvertently think it didn't interest you enough as its competitors did. However, performance wise it was at par with Jetway JIN73 M2-PHG-VT which is our overall winner in this category. In fact, it fared pretty well when compared to MSI 945GC M5-FV2 in terms of performance. MSI P35 Neo was the only board in this range which came with the support for 45nm processor, making it one of the most future ready board. So as soon as 45nm comes in this board will have support for it, whereas other might need an upgrade.

As stated earlier, the entry level is for the price conscious consumers who ask for maximum value for money with the least cost involved. We saw some boards like XFX 630i – 7100 which went ahead and offered all the three video ports, and some like the Jetway JM 26 GT3 – SVP which offered just a single SATA port, and the JHA-02 GTE which had absolutely no onboard support for video. In some cases, it may mean that you will have to shell out some extra cash to get an onboard video card. It was good to see RAID support in majority of the board with only some of the Jetway boards been the exception in this regard.

Overall, lots have changed in this segment and all these are welcome change.

Rs 4-8k Boards

The Winners

XFX 630i–7150

While testing this board, somehow intuitively we knew it was going to win. Promising robust performance and features to kill for and yet being easy on your pocket is what the 630i–7150 is all about. It supports Intel's Core 2 Extreme (both quad and dual core) and Core 2 Duo processors. It is compatible with nVIDIA MCP73U/PV/V/D chipset. In features, it supports 4 USB ports, 6 Audio channels, 1 PCI-Express slot and 2 PCI slots, 2 slots each for DIMM and LAN and 3 slots for SATA. Video outlets are provided on board with HDMI, VGA and DVI. An added advantage of having an HDMI port is that you can transfer both audio and video signals to a desired device, and the XFX 630i – 7150 empowers you to do just that.

In PCMark05, it scores 5624, which was second best in this range, with MSI P6N SLI giving the best score of 6248. It scored 8304 3DMarks in 3DMark06 benchmark, which was the highest in this category. This goes to prove that XFX boards have been excellent with graphics capabilities. In fact the only close competitor to this board was MSI P965 Neo which scored 8288 3DMarks. In the other tests, XFX 630i-7150 fared well and overall its performance score was in close proximity to the MSI P6N SLI board.

MSI P965 Neo

The MSI P965 Neo supports Intel Dual Core and Pentium 4 processors, whereas Intel ICH8 and Intel P965 chipsets are compatible on it. It features 4 DIMM slots, 1 PCI-Express and 3 PCI slots, 4 USB ports, 6 audio support channels and 4 SATA and 2 LAN ports.

It scored 5088 in PCMark, which is slightly lower then XFX, but a good score nevertheless. In 3DMark06, it was second highest with a score of 8288 3DMarks. It performed better than the XFX board in the POV Ray benchmark, wherein its CPU response time was around 4 as compared to XFX's 5. Apart from that both were almost equal. It lost majorly due to a lack of features. Had it come with any one of the video options, either DVI or HDMI or even VGA, it would have given a tough fight for the top spot. Its pricing however is better than the XFX board, but you'll have to shell out extra for a video card to use this board.

Other Contenders

Budget ranges includes the users who are ready to pay a bit extra, but not very much and still want to enjoy almost all the features and blazing performance from their motherboard. While in the entry level the first warrior from the XFX family, the 630i – 7100 just missed the top slot by a whisker, its sibling, the XFX 630i – 7150 manages to grab the honour of the overall best performer in all categories in the budget range of motherboards.

If features are of prime importance to you, you may consider the MSI G33M which offers 4 slots each for DIMM and SATA, 6 slots each for USB and Audio, 2 each for PCI and LAN, 1 PCI express slot and 1 VGA port for video output. Well, you couldn't have asked for more, at least in the budget range and is the only board which comes with 45nm processor support, which means its one of the most future ready board. You won't need to upgrade your motherboard if you want to migrate to 45nm processor.

There may still be some, who are unable to stretch their budget and demand the best possible features and performance in the least possible amount. For them, Simmtronics SIMM NV – 7050 would be the ideal choice as it costs a little over Rs. 4000/- and offers 4 slots each for DIMM and USB, 2 each for PCI, LAN and SATA, 3 video ports (HDMI, VGA and DVI), 6 audio channels and 1 PCI express slot.

The budget range starts from Rs. 4000 onwards. Hence people investing such amount of money would obviously expect performance and features a notch higher than the entry level range. However, we were quite disappointed to see some features synonymous with the sub 4K range like one or no PCI/video ports, 3 audio channels even in a budget range. All the three entrants from Gigabyte did manage to perform well in our score but where lacking in features in that price bracket. We have seen other boards offering more features at that price range.

Asus M2A-VM DVI was a strong contender in the competition. As it was priced brilliantly but again due to lack of features it was hit badly, but it should not be counted out simple coz of it's pricing. You get almost all features and decent performance at an attractive price, making it a board worth a look. Even the other Asus board M2R32-MVP scored very high in performance but eventually lack of features and higher price led to its downfall.

Ankush Sharma and Saurangshu Kanunjna with help from Vijay Chauhan