PC Motherboard And Chipset Reviews And News
There's nobody quite like Mom and when it comes to performance desktop computers or business class workhorse machines, motherboards are always what bring the computing family together. Motherboards house all PC components from the processor, to memory and storage. Here you'll find our coverage on big motherboard brands and products from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA, ASRock and many more, along with the chipsets from AMD and Intel that power the PC Master Race.
Nvidia's SLI technology launched in mid-2004, and was designed to provide high-performance rendering power for gamers. Because the technology was brand new, and the fastest thing on the market, SLI configurations demanded exorbitant price premiums over single card configurations, despite first generation issues like software compatibility,...
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By now you're all familiar with Intel's Core micro-architecture, as well as the dual and quad-core Core 2 Duo, Extreme, and Quad processors based on it. With the launch of their Core 2 processors, Intel no longer played second fiddle to AMD in terms of overall performance or power efficiency. And for the last few months since their...
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In the last two years, we've seen a major push for home theater PC's by big names in the computer industry. Intel is pushing their ViiV initiative for HTPC market, AMD is pushing their competing AMD Live! program, and of course, Microsoft got in the game with their Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system. While the product...
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The second phase of NVIDIA's two pronged attack on the gaming and enthusiast community today involves a new family of nForce chipsets for both the Intel and AMD platforms. The nForce 600 family of products is spearheaded by the nForce 680i SLI and 680a SLI. Although the two products share a similar naming convention, they are...
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Stepping back to look at who has the largest market share in the chipset sector for AMD socket AM2 processors, it's clear who is on top and who is not. Take virtually any major motherboard manufacturer and see what they have to offer and in most cases, NVIDIA chipset solutions are going to dominate the...
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When news first broke that Abit was going to be purchased by USI earlier this year, it seemed unlikely that Abit would continue their long-running tradition of producing enthusiast level motherboards. After all, USI is a much more traditional electronics company, and enthusiast/overclocking platforms didn't seem like they would...
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When Intel unleashed the Core 2 back in July, they introduced the P965 as their mainstream chipset, while the 975X Express chipset was upgraded with Core 2 support to cover the high-end enthusiast segment. However, the P965 didn't end up being 'just' a mainstream product. As production boards utilizing the...
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With the release of NVIDIA's nForce 500 Series, NVIDIA opened the door to a broad range of features tailored to both AMD and Intel based architectures. Today, we have a line up of three motherboards outfitted with the nForce 590 SLI chipset for AMD, offering the best the 500 series has to offer. Before...
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It's easy to sit back and say "he was a good boy -- he took it on the chin like a man", or so to speak, as the good folks at Intel would like to say about their rivals at Advanced Micro Devices. Conversely, you might quickly discover the error of your ways, if you've counted AMD out. As we're sure...
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DFI has earned a reputation over the last couple of years for producing feature-rich, enthusiast friendly motherboards. DFI's decked out LANPARTY family of motherboards in particular has become known to many around the world as a family of products that cater to the unique needs of the enthusiast and overclocking...
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The call of most computing enthusiasts or workstation professionals has always been "more power, more bandwidth and more features, please". The advent of serial PCI Express-based computer architectures was the foundation of an enabling technology that provided a much needed solution to the bottleneck problems...
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Last month, Intel officially launched their new Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors with much fanfare. Based on the heavily hyped "Conroe" core and utilizing the modern "Core" microarchitecture, as opposed to the NetBurst microarchitecture employed in the Pentium 4 and Pentium D, Intel's Core 2 Duo and Core...
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Six to nine months prior to the launch of Intel's Core 2 Duo product line, if you polled the average HotHardware.com reader, regarding their thoughts on an Intel 975X based motherboard, you might well have gotten a luke-warm reception. Back then AMD's dual core Athlon 64 X2 and FX offerings were in full stride and NVIDIA's...
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ATI's chipset division, talented as they are, seem to have always played second fiddle to rival nVidia. Both nVidia and ATI started originally producing chipsets in 2001/2002 for low-end markets, using their experience in producing graphics processors as leverage to produce chipsets with integrated graphics abilities. Over time, both nVidia...
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It's a shame, really. After nearly one year on the market, Socket-939 Athlon64 motherboards are finally getting to a point where we've always wished they would be. Feature packed, refined, tweakable, and quiet. Why is this a shame? Well, as AMD is transitioning to their new Socket-AM2 interface, interest in Socket-939 platforms...
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Market share is the name of the game in the Computing industry and AMD has been slowly chipping away at Intel's market share over the past few years, with the release of faster Desktop processor cores with significantly better performance per watt, clock-cycle and dollar. AMD's performance advantage also...
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Trends in PC hardware usually come about for a good reason. As processor and memory speeds continued to rise, many manufacturers responded by producing more elaborate air cooling apparatuses. Some of them worked well, while others offered almost no improvement at all. In either case, lowering temperatures in this...
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As ECS continues to gain respect and attention in the enthusiast motherboard market, the company is of course extending its reach into the segment it is best known for - the budget segment. While high-end and enthusiast-level boards often cost $150 or more, budget and entry-level motherboards can usually be had for $70-90. Entry-level doesn't...
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When we look at the Small Form Factor platform's relative size and shape, it is easy to see why these systems are becoming extremely popular as dedicated living room or home theater PC's. With the gradual adoption of Media Center PC's in the home, Shuttle is now trying harder than ever to ensure that those systems are small...
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Right from its inception, ATI knew they had to build a solid platform if their CrossFire multi-GPU technology was to gain mass acceptance. NVIDIA already had the very popular nForce 4 SLI chipset in their repertoire, but ATI didn't have a direct competitor that also offered a pair PCI Express Graphics (PEG) slots. ...
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Asus has been more cautious compared to most motherboard makers when it comes to using Intel's mobile processors in a desktop environment. In late 2004, when the first Pentium-M desktop motherboards started hitting the market, Asus took a back seat and did not put out a product for this rapidly expanding market, whereas smaller motherboard...
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Intel's current line-up of desktop processors based on the company's aging Netburst micro-architecture may not have the allure it once did with power users, thanks in no small part to fierce competition from arch-rival AMD, but their core logic chipsets have always been held in high regard. Intel puts an...
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