Choosing a Motherboard for a Middle-End Machine (Socket AM2)

As of November 2007

Motherboards

Which boards are most popular in the market segment being considered? It is easy to get a formal answer by querying any of the price search engines and look at the number of offers for each of the aforementioned chipsets. For the final chart we have reduced the rather long resulting list to the boards that by the compound characteristics best fit the requirements of those consumers, who wish to build a middle-end system described above.

If we look at just the main characteristics it will be easy to notice that the selected motherboards, despite being based on various chipsets, are more alike than they are different. Except for two boards the manufacturers have found a way to equip all products with 3 or 4 PCI slots. In all cases support for at least 4 SATA or 2 PATA devices is provided. All of the chipsets on the list can support 10 USB ports, while the boards are designed for exactly such a number of connectors. 4-6 are as usual located on the rear panel, and there are headers for the remaining ones that the users can wire to expansion brackets on the rear panel or connect to the front panel ports on their own.

On the other hand, FireWire support is not considered relevant by the manufacturers. Such ports are easier to find on the boards with integrated graphics, including boards of microATX form-factor. It is probably, a consequence of such boards' orientation towards media centers. Many users wish to connect such systems to digital video cameras, which are the primary consumers of such ports. Vice-versa, FireWire can be found in the category of expensive rich-functionality boards, where it is common to just include all possible interfaces that a user may need.

In contrast, Gigabit Ethernet network controller is almost always used on such boards. For the boards based on NVIDIA chipsets in most cases the abilities of chipsets (a built-in MAC-adapter) are exploited zealously. From a user's point of view the boards with PCI Express controllers are not any worse. However, those few cases where a gigabit controller has to make do with a PCI bus will undoubtedly be criticized by the users, who have gigabit network equipment and work with applications that generate a lot of traffic.

We intentionally pay little attention to the integrated audio codecs. Sound cards are installed into DYI middle-end systems just about as often as into expensive systems. In contrast to the high-end PCs, the card does not necessarily have to be one of the latest Creative products and the likes. It could be one bought some time ago and that has outlasted several computers. Let us just say that an 8-channel Realtek codec is a typical outfit. A positive distinctive feature of such boards is that not everyone who wants to connect their equipment to a digital interface will have to buy and extra bracket for setting up S/PDIF ports. There are also boards with coaxial and even optical ports available on the rear panel.

Speaking of components, we must add that all of the motherboards in this category do not offer a lot. Apart from the ability to connect a couple of disks, all of the user's demands are treated as excessive. You will have to take care of them on your own after the purchase.

Conclusions

Judging from the forecasts provided by CPU manufacturers, no significant changes are expected in the middle-end segment in the near future. In is quite natural that motherboards for the Socket AM2+ platform will add to the variety. They will begin displacing boards based on nForce 590 SLI and AMD 580X chipsets out of the expensive board segment. However, considering the evolutionary nature of changes planned as part of the introduction of Socket AM2+, as well as persistent widespread compatibility of processors and motherboards, successful popular inexpensive boards will remain in high demand still for quite some time. Some of them may even break market longevity records. Should we expect a decrease of prices for boards based on Socket AM2? It is possible to some degree, but hardly a significant and an abrupt one. Unlike the prices for processors, motherboard prices depend on a much higher number of competing companies and, therefore, go down gradually instead of all at once. Besides, there are no objective reasons for such a sharp decrease in this case (in contrast, for example, to the case of processors with incompatible sockets and other characteristics that require a change of the motherboard).