ATX 12V 2.0:
ATX 12V is a new type of compliant to power supplies that feature a 24-pin
connection that jack into new motherboards which have PCI-E capabilities. PCI-
E graphic cards can consume up to 75W of power compared to the 50W maximum
limit on AGP cards. Most motherboards don't force you to buy a new PSU to run
your 24-pin motherboard. They allow the older 20 pin connectors to work by
leaving 4 pins vacant.
BTX Formfactor:
BTX is a new motherboard formfactor that moves the processor to the front of
the case, moves the chipset in order to obtain higher I/O speeds and features
better cooling. The BTX formfactor may have been greated very well by PC
enthusiasts but the chasis manufacturers are not too happy since they have to
shell out the big ucks, near $50K, to retool their assembly line. AMD is not
following INTEL's footsteps since it stated to the public that it will not
embrace this new standard unless customers ask for it. BTX has a way better
design than its preceder, ATX, and it willdefenetively become the new standard
soon.My guess is around 2-3 years.
DDR2 RAM:
The introduction of DDR2 has been really slow. DDR2 has improved apon DDR by
by prefetching double the amount of data as DDR and it is designed to flo more
than double the bandwith of DDR 3700 (400MHz). DDR2 sticks are not compatible
with DDR at all sinceit electrically takes more power since it uses 1.8V while
DDR used 2.5V and DDR2 is not physically fit to work dince it has 240 pins
while DDR had 184 pins. DDR2 has not been proven to be worth it at its current
400 and 533MHz speeds because of the increased latencies but DDR2 is comming
out with 667 and 800MHz speeds which will be attractive.
Dual-Core CPU Support:
Two Processors will be featured on single CPU dies which will increase the
performance for gammers but will probably have near no effect for non-gaming
applications. Most applications will not be featuring/supporting this new
feature any time soon but it is claimed that the users will have a "smoother"
experience.AMD claims that all Socket 939 mobos that can run an FX-55 CPU will
have no problem to take on the dual-core processors. On INTEL's side things
are alot more confusing since their only dual core compatible chipset is the
945/955X. Certain vendors say that 925X chipsets workfine as well. It is
suggested that if you are shopping or a new motherboard make sure that it is
dual-core compatible.
High-Definition Audio: High Definition Audio, also known as HD Audio or by its codename, Azalia, is an audio standard created by Intel to be used on their chipsets, i.e., it is a standard for high-quality on-board audio. In this tutorial we will explain more about this feature.
All Intel chipsets based on PCI Express bus – like i915 and i925 – support High Definition Audio. This standard provides two new features: multi-streaming, which allows more than one audio signal to be sent to a different audio device – for example, to watch a DVD on your living room transferring the audio thru a wireless network while talking thru a voice over IP solution at the same time on your desktop in your office – and high quality audio.
Before HD Audio was released, on-board high quality audio was only available if your motherboard had a separated high quality audio controller – like Envy24 from VIA, for example. With HD Audio technology, the south bridge of the chipset produces high-quality audio itself, without the need of a separated controller chip, what would make the motherboard more expensive. The south bridge only needs an external codec (coder/decoder) chip to make the needed digital/analog and analog/digital conversions. This kind of chip is inexpensive compared to a “full” controller chip. One example of codec compatible with Intel’s HD Audio is C-Media 9880.
High Definition Audio provides 7.1 surround audio with 192 KHz sampling rate and up to 32-bit resolution. Other audio solutions embedded on the chipset support a maximum of 48 KHz sampling rate and 20-bit resolution, even when they support 5.1 configuration (“6-channel surround audio”).
NCQ and SATA 3GB:
SATA 3GB is a pretty simple subject to graspsince the original SATA connection
is now doubled to 300MB/s. Today's hard drives are not in need of such high
speeds but there is no reason why no to have it tho if you buy a new mobo. NCQ
or nativecommand queuing is very important since it enables your hard drive
and its controller to reorder data requests according to priority in an
intelligent manner. This extra hard drive intelligence allows it to collect
and write data faster than before. Even tho NCQ only gives small performance
boosts according to the ressources that I used, it is still worth having when
buying a new mobo.
PCI-Express:
PCI-Express has become the new motherboard standard practically overnight
since the change happened so fast. PCI-E has proven to be faster than the
older AGP standard but there isn't a big performance boost unless two PCI-E
cards are paired together. PCI-E is one of the few leaders so far that have
moved away from wide and slow interfaces with lots of pins to narrow and high-
speed interfaces. AGP's bandwith was 2GB/s but now PCI-E has brought the
bandwith up to a great 8GB/s. PCI-E also has the greatest advantage in its
upstream bandwith since AGP had a 133MB/s bandwith but now PCI-E has a
bandwith of 4GB/s which is a tramendous improvement. The new x1 PCI-E
connector is going to try to take over PCI slots since it offers 300MB/s which
is more than double of PCI's bandwith. On todays motherboards there are
already so many integrated parts that the more and more expansion slots are
being left empty. However, software developpers will be soon taking advantage
of this in the near future to my predictions.
SLI:
Sli which is also known as scalable link interface is the process of running
to video cards together to generate an image onto one screen. SLI allows two
GPUs, graphic processing units, to share the work load while displaying their
content on a single monitor. To do this it requires a motherboard that has two
x16 PCI-E slots. When buying orsetting up this configuration must customers do
not realise that they are not going to get x16 bandwith ineach slot. Current
boards top out at around x20. There are two possible configurations. It is
possible to set them up so that one runs at x16 and the other at x4 or you can
make them both run at x8 which is said to be the optimal setting. On most
current SLI mobos a switch or pin must be turned on to enable or disable SLI
mode. There is a catch for SLI at the current stage of the game. If you play
current games a big performance boost wont be seen but in the near future
those twins will become veryusefull since future games are likely to run
faster technology.
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