baby atx & atx

[Marvelii]

are there any performance difference between atx and baby atx form motherboards?

 

[knowan]

Performance differences? Not really.

Baby ATX mobo's usually have 3 or fewer PCI slots, most ATX have 5 or more. Obviously you can put more stuff inside a full sized ATX mobo.

Baby ATX fit better inside of a "mini" tower case. They also tend to rely more on "on-board" options (as fewer PCI cards will fit on the mobo).

Basically, baby ATX mobo's are cut down versions of their full sized cousins. They are smaller, cheaper, and take up less room than the full sized ATX mobos. They are ment to be put inside of smaller and cheaper mini tower cases as well (although you can put them inside larger cases). This is why most OEM's use them.

Performance wise, there isn't much difference. Baby ATX does tend to rely more on "on-board" stuff, which can use up your system resources, but the same options on an ATX mobo will use the same amount of resources. The main difference is their cost and the lack of expandability (due to the limited number of PCI slots).

If you're looking for something cheap and don't plan on doing alot of upgrading, go for a baby ATX. If you pan on using 3 or more PCI cards (modem, sound card, etc) then ATX is the only way to go.

 

[Crashman]

I don't know of any "Baby ATX" motherboards. There used to be "Baby AT" motherboards, now there's "Micro Atx". I wouldn't buy anything from a person who confuses the two, I wouldn't know for sure what I was getting!

Back to you Tom...

 

[knowan]

Yeah I know, but it's the terminology that he used so I stuck with it. I actually typed "baby AT" instead of "baby ATX" a few times and had to go back and correct it. There is a major diffrence between baby <b>AT</b> and ATX boards, but performance wise not much between <b>micro</b> ATX and ATX.