The Motherboard

From the looks of our message boards as of late, the computers' motherboard seems to be a very misunderstood topic. In this column of Geek Speak I will attempt to make the major components, and how they affect us, a little more clear.

The motherboard is the component of the PC that all other components fit into. It tells every other component where and how it is allowed to communicate with the rest of the PC and it controls the busses that your hard drives, CD-Roms and floppy drives transfer their data through. Also, the CPU rests on the motherboard and the motherboard tells the CPU how fast it is allowed to operate via some jumpers, dip-switches or BIOS settings.

The CPU, while not part of the motherboard itself, does work in with the motherboard to make the whole PC do it's job correctly. CPU's come in different shapes and sizes, not too many month's ago all CPU's were of the "socket 7" format (socket shown below) that was used for the first-generation Pentium CPU's and AMD K6, K6-2's and K6-3's. But then, with Athlons, Pentium II's and III's the slot design was introduced (also shown below). After the slot design came out, manufacturers found it was more costly to make slot CPU's, so some went back to the socket with the Socket 370, which looks like the Socket 7, just bigger.

Socket 7 style CPU fitting

Slot 1 style CPU fitting

So when you consider upgrading your CPU, or purchasing a new motherboard, the style of CPU you have, or want to have must be considered so they will actually physically fit together.

When installing and setting up a CPU, three different ratings come into play...Voltage, Bus Speed and Multiplier. On many new modern motherboards, voltage is auto-detected, bus speed and multiplier work together to set the CPU's speed. If you have a 600 Mhz PII that runs on a 100Mhz bus you set the motherboard to run the FSB (Front Side Bus) at 100Mhz and the multiplier is set at 6, if the same chip runs at 133Mhz the multiplier is 4.5. Basically, the bus speed multiplied by the multiplier equals the overall speed of the chip...simple, huh?

The next component we will discuss that comes into play on a motherboard is RAM, we pretty much all know this component as the "the more the better" part of the PC. RAM is without-a-doubt, the easiest component to install in a PC. Any reasonably modern PC (or any you would dare record on anyway) comes with one of two types of RAM, SIMM'S or DIMM's. The slots they fit in are shown below.

168-pin DIMM slot (for 100 and 133Mhz FSB)


72-pin SIMM slot (for 66Mhz FSB)

The 72 pin RAM was found on Socket 7 boards and run at 66Mhz and must be installed in matched pairs for reasons that are FAR beyond the scope of this column. They have been pretty much antiquated by the new DIMM style RAM. This RAM runs at up to 133 Mhz and is used with the newer Pentium Chips, and the Athlons have a RAM bus that runs even faster than that! These styles of RAM can be installing as a single piece.

Installation of RAM is simple, just snap it in a slot and turn on the PC. Any errors from RAM installations are generally caused by the RAM not being seated securely in the slot...it's really that easy.

The last component I want to discuss, is the component that has been mentioned more than any other on the message boards, and is the cause of most incompatibility problems, the chipset. When someone says "chipset" many people mistake that for the CPU, they are not the same thing. The chipset is a set of chips on the motherboard that actually allocate system addresses and resources to the specific components and are in charge of making everything operate when and how it is supposed to.

This, by nature, can cause as many problems as it solves it is poorly made, or very highly specific. Such is the case with very high-end sound cards. They are made to use every little bit of power it can to make the best audio possible, which means it may rely heavily on the chipset to give it the resources it needs, and some chipsets just can't do that. Many brand-name PC's or budget-level motherboards are made for the common user that gets email, surfs the net and plays games.

Probably the most common issue is that many high-end sound cards absolutely need their own IRQ resource and have nothing else sharing it. IRQ stand for "interrupt request" it is like an address that the component is known by, or the "house it lives in" in your PC. The Lexicon Core 2 is a perfect example, it is an awesome sound card, however, the price paid for having it is that it has to live alone at it's IRQ, no if's, and's or but's about it. If you system refuses to give it that resource, it will conflict with the sharing component(s) and lock up the PC or crash it when you attempt to record. Most consumer level devices can share happily, My Echo shares with no problem, but many sound cards don't. You will commonly see this problem with video capture cards as well, due to the high-performance, system-draining nature of their job. It doesn't necessarily make it a bad card, just a picky one.

The chipset is two little flat chips on the motherboard with some manufacturer name and a model number. Common makers of these are Intel, ALI and VIA. Each of these makers has many models of chips for different processor speeds and configurations. Experience has proven to me that, if you can, the best bet is Intel for chipsets, they are widely tested on by component manufacturers because they are...well, they're Intel, one of the biggest chip makers in the world if not the biggest, so if their components don't work with Intel, they may as well go back to the drawing board...Athlon systems are another matter, Intel doesn't support them (that I am aware of anyway) so AMD or VIA chipsets will have to work.

I hope this small article helps you understand a little bit more about your system. When you are building your system, or upgrading your existing one, always check the manufacturer's website of any component you are buying to see any known issues with incompatibilities or bugs relating to any specific software or hardware, it could well save you a lot of time, money and headaches. So, rock on, have fun, and be a wise consumer instead of a ticked-off one.