How to choose the best motherboards

New chipsets, developed by the Intel and nVidia Corporations, accelerate the process of new the computer motherboards creation. Actually, opportunities of each new computer motherboard are restricted only with opportunities, provided by a used chipset. The most popular chipsets from Intel are used in the best motherboards i925X and i915P.

The chipset Intel 915P officially supports the processor bus 533MHz and the memory type DDR-1. That is the reason why producers of the best motherboards are in a profitable position, though there are many solutions with the support of only DDR-2, DDR-1 and combined solutions with the support for all memory types.

Producers of the best motherboards are longing to make a transformation to a new platform easier for an end user. Thus, there are many hybrids or intermediate solutions. There are some motherboards with the support of both AGP and PCI Express x16 buses. Moreover, the company ASRock (one of ASUS departments) produced a motherboard with the support of two processor sockets LGA775 and Socket478. There are also non standard hybrids with the processor socket LGA775 on the cards with the chipset i865PE and the processor Socket478 on the cards with the chipset i915P.

As the result of this strategy, the companies propose many models of the best motherboards. The process of the multiple motherboards models creation is accelerated by a significant increase of prices for LGA775 motherboards. At the same time, producers propose some models, which have amazing technical parameters. They have all possible on-board technologies, a very powerful BIOS setting and a rich set. In this way developers of the best motherboards provide a new hardware class - Super High-End.

Such motherboards can be found in the assortment of any big producer. For instance, ASUS provides three powerful motherboards on the chipset i925X - P5AD2 Premium, P5AD2 Deluxe, P5AD2. There is a line of motherboards on a cheaper chipset i915P - P5GD2, P5GD2 Deluxe, P5GD2 and P5GD1 (DDR-1). You can also find some hybrid models, which have an intermediate price level, for instance, the P5GDC (DDR-1 and DDR-2, LGA775, i865PE), P5P800 (DDR-1, LGA775, i865PE) and P4GD1 (DDR-1, Socket478, i915P).

Hence, the increase of the models quantity does not mean the increase of a general number of produced motherboards. In fact, not all producers are ready to produce LGA775 motherboards. Many companies developed a PCB design for the LGA775 and proposed them to public at expositions. Simultaneously, they will start a mass production of new models only if they get a sufficient number of orders. The production of the motherboards on a new chipset has many factors of risks. Only large and powerful corporations, such as ASUS or Gigabyte, are able to start this production without hesitations.