Mortherboards, CPUs and Chipsets, OH MY!

[Krell]

I started out pulling together some info on mother boards, and realized that there is such a diversity in the market, doing any simple comparison isn't justice.

Instead, I am including a slew of articles where you can get first hand benchmarks and specs on the latest MBs, CPUs Chipset, and some tutorals for you tinkeres. I threw in everything but the kitchen sink, and if you cant find what you want to know on one of these pages, let me know. If you spend 1/2 as long reading these, as I did evaluating them, you will learn a thing or two.

You cant make an informed decision on a motherboard, without knowing a thing or two about the cpu to use. You will also have to consider what ram to buy, and what on-board features you will need, such as Sound, Video, USB2, Firewire, RAID, Network, and hardware monitoring. Also, pay attention to the reviewers notes on parts placement, ease of use, and warrenty\tech support. Remember that price isnt always the bottem line. You cant compare a Kia to a BMW.

I hope this will help you to catch up on todays market, and plan for a few more good years of computing.

Cheers!


Let there be mother boards, the all inclusive resource
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/subjects/55/


Examples of Intel based motherboards
http://www.hardwareextreme.com/reviews/motherboard/dfi_nb73ea/page3.shtml

Intel: For a few $ more
http://www.gen-x-pc.com/compare_pentium_4_and_amd_xp_sys.htm

Intel based board reviews
http://www.extremetech.com/category2/0,3971,518027,00.asp

New Intel chips: whats all the hype?
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,793451,00.asp

6 high end P4 Mb reviews
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,436791,00.asp

13 P4 DDR MBs, the swimsuit issue
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,9952,00.asp


6 AMD board reviews
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,674366,00.asp

22 AMD board reviews
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,674372,00.asp


NVIDIA ABIT ASUS the new Ménage à trois
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1759


All things cpu: for OC and info
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/subjects/50/

More cpu review to do
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/index.html

CPU speed isnt everything, dont miss the bus
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,674442,00.asp

What's new cpu? plan for 64 bits processors
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,674440,00.asp


Chips A Hoy! Which chipset supports which cpus which supports which . . . .
http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/index.html

Ram rundown
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,9963,00.asp

BIOS: the root of all evil, and all performance
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/subjects/26/

To build or to buy, for better or worst, till death do you part?
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/subjects/71/

Overclock till you burn out: Keepin it cool
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/subjects/75/

So ya wanna be a tweaka, a geeka, 1st person fraggin freaka
http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=review
.

[cheapprick]

Wow, that was pretty good of you. Some really nice links there.

[Sephiroth]

www.motherboards.org ive used to gather info on motherboards in the past. They have specs and reviews of motherboards plus tutorials and etc. Its a pretty good site that should also help anyone looking for mobo info.

and www.tomshardware.com for reviews on hardware for comparisons and etc.

[phalkon30]

Hey seph, I may PM you about this

In another thread I brought up the idea of a new forum area, it would be dedicated to guids on stuff, it would be a locked forum, but if a user PM'd you with a guide, you could make the decision if it was a good one or not, after you moved the thread into the new forum, you could lock the thread, this would keep a clean forum, with ONLY guides

We could then link to this forum for reference, I think it would really help, because Krell and others have made a few great guides, that got mucked up by comments, were hard to find, and went out of site quickly, if we had something that stayed around for a while, it would be awesome help to the site

There is another thread where we talked about it, if I can find it again, I'll PM you the link, a couple other members think its a good idea, not just me

[Sephiroth]

private messages are limited to a 1000 characters.. Thats not a whole lot..

If people want to make guides then just post them in the forum they fit with the most and i could sticky it.

[phalkon30]

Originally posted by Sephiroth
If people want to make guides then just post them in the forum they fit with the most and i could sticky it.

That works to, next time I see a good guide, I'll let you know, or have the thread maker contact you, thanx!

Btw, I was going to pm you about the idea, not all the info

[overdo]

thx for the links krell. as for phalkons idea about a separate forum that could be a gd thing. only allowed tutorials could be posted, on things from k++ to win XP to the best graphics cards around. would save on ppl repeating the same questions in threads, especially if it were put right at the top of the forums list...