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James Gorbold

Input/Output - How to choose a motherboard

Posted at: 27th November 2007

Selecting the right motherboard is probably the most important decision you're likely to face when upgrading, so here are the factors to consider.


Even if you go to the effort of buying a special G0-stepping Core 2 Quad Q6600, or anything else from Intel's range of wondrously overclockable Core 2 CPUs, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to overclock your shiny new processor if you don't have a decent motherboard in which to install it. However, what elements make one motherboard worth buying, and another fit only to rot on the shelf before being melted down and turned into a hairdryer or something equally unworthy?

The $1million question when buying a new motherboard is which CPU(s) it needs to support. At the moment, this is an easy decision to make; unless you have a ton of cash to spare and can afford a pair of LGA771 Xeons, you need a motherboard that supports LGA775 Core 2 CPUs. Of course, this may change when AMD releases its range of Phenom processors later this year - hopefully just in time for next month's annual CPU megatest - but for now, an LGA775 motherboard is the only sensible choice.

Next, you need to think about the type of case that will house your PC. If you're hoping to build a small form factor PC with a micro-ATX motherboard then you should pretty much give up on the idea of overclocking. Micro-ATX motherboards are generally rubbish for overclocking, while micro-ATX PSUs are incredibly weedy, so they'll struggle to power a quad-core CPU and a decent graphics card.

The next question to consider is whether you're going to install two graphics cards and run them together in SLI or CrossFire. This matter deserves greater depth in a separate article of its own but, for the sake of brevity, it's important to note just how few games run significantly faster, if at all, on SLI or CrossFire than on a single card, especially in Vista. Therefore, unless you have a 30in monitor and want to play games at 2,560 x 1,600, you're far better off investing in a single powerful graphics card than two cards that will improve performance in a limited number of games, but which will significantly increase the noise level, heat output and power consumption of your PC. As such, anybody with an older graphics card (GeForce 7-series or Radeon X18/X19-series) who finds that their PC is beginning to struggle with modern games is better off buying a single GeForce 8800 GT than a second graphics card to run alongside your current card.

Once you realise that having more than one high-speed graphics card slot on a motherboard is more of a marketing gimmick than a genuinely useful feature, you can make a much better-informed decision as to whether to buy a motherboard based on an Intel or Nvidia chipset. It's long been the case that Intel makes the best-performing chipsets for its own CPUs, and for the current generation of Core 2-supporting chipsets, this is still true. Not only that, but Intel chipsets are generally better for overclocking, too - the P35 and X38, in particular, are capable of FSB frequencies of 500MHz or more without batting an eyelid. What's more, we've found that boards based on the nForce 680i SLI chipset can be very fussy about which memory you install.

However, if you're on a tight budget, you shouldn't despair at the high cost of P35 and X38 motherboards. It should come as no surprise that just as Intel CPUs are very overclockable, so are Intel chipsets. Gigabyte knows this very well, which is why it has produced a series of super-cheap motherboards over the years, such as the superlative P31-based GA-P31-DS3L. On paper the P31 chipset doesn't support 1,333MHz FSB CPUs, but the GA-P31-DS3L does, and is even capable of overclocking them.

Other factors to consider when buying a new motherboard include the sort of RAM it supports. While DDR3 memory might be tempting, it only provides a benefit over DDR2 for quad-core CPUs, particularly when overclocked. Even then you could argue that, for double the price of DDR2, you'd be far better off buying a better graphics card than hugely expensive DDR3.

Finally, it's critical that you consider the type of cooling the motherboard provides for its vital components - the Northbridge, Southbridge and VRMs. Without sufficient cooling, these components will burn out and die after running overclocked and overvolted for more than a few months, and you'll find yourself looking for a new motherboard all over again.

Armed with the answers to all these questions, you should be well prepared to choose your next motherboard when you read this month's Labs test. Good hunting.

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P35 Boards...

Since going to 'press', have P35's become any more affordable...? I've got my sights on a GA P35-DS4; unless there's a better option that springs to mind for similar outlay..?

Comment by jaghine at 1:22am 31st December 2007

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