Confused ICT student in need of help! lol

[dizzy]

Hi there, I mite sound a little stupid to u guys, but i searched and found this site and wondered if some of you may be able to help me. I am an A-Level ICT student, and have coursework to do about computer hardware. Now, i am more of a sofware person myself and don't really know anything about motherboards and processors and sound cards and things.

The main thing I need to know really is what makes one motherboard better than another? What makes one cost £60 and one cost £500? I hope someone will be able to explain it a little in normal english! lol

It would also help alot of someone could advise me on which are the best sound cards and graphics cards? ta!
thanks
-Liz

 

[arsend]

Hello dizzy, The cost of a motherboard is determined by 3 major factors, brandname, quality of the components, and the many features that they can have. Here a few examples.

Brand Names:
Processors: you have 2 main types of processors, those from Intel called Pentium 4, Celeron and Zeon. And those from AMD, mainly called the Atholon, and the Opteron.
Most concermers on the budget end by the Celeron and Atholon processors, as they are not as fast, while mainstream and performance machines take on the Pentium 4 and Atholon at higher speeds, and higher prices. The Zeon and Opteron are server based CPU's, and come at a hefty price tag.

Motherboards: Motherboards are made for the above CPU's. The Chipset on the motherboard determines what kind of CPU, and the speed and reliablity of the motherboard/ Computer. Good Chipsets come from Intel, for the Pentium/ Celeron/ Zeon systems, while InVidia makes the good Chipsets for the AMD platform. In adition, Via, and SIS both make chipsets for both brands, however, they are not as fast or stable, and tend to be picky if you want high performance, mainly because of the drivers.

Additional costs that run up a motherboard is what it has to offer. Sound, Lan, RAID,Overclocking features, firewire, amd video can increase the cost of a motherboard, while decreasing the cost of the overall machine. Warnning, most cheaper systems come with on board Video, so if you see a board that has this, it is mainly targeted at the 'Value' segment.

In the current scope of things, two main players provide us with Video cards, ATI and Invidia. The ATI cards come under the brand name Radeon, while the Invidia cards come under the brand name GeForce. Right now, ATI cards have the upperhand in both price and performance, but this tends to go back and forth over time. In practice, the higher the number, the more performance you will get, with a few exceptions. a ATI 9000 Pro card is slower than the ATI 9500 Pro, With is slower than the 9800. The same goes for Invidia.

Sound Cards: For most of the world, integrated sound is king, for those of us with more expensive tastes, we buy a PCI sound card. Creative here has been the market leaderfor a long time (the virtually invented the consumer line sound card)The soundblaster Live is the value oriented card, with the Audigy and Audigy 2 taking the higher road. Other Sound card mainufactur's have decent products, and sometimes supperior, but more than likely, you will see ten Creative cards sold to one of their's.

This is a brief exclaimation of PC basics, I am sure that others will be able to add more info for you.



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