Hardware Wars

Thorlord · Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 7:32 pm

Hardware Wars
by Thorlord

Welcome back to hardware wars. This month its all about Motherboards and Processors.

The use, and performance, of your computer relies on the CPU (Central Processing Unit). The speed (measured in Mega Hertz or MHz) of the CPU was most commonly seen as the deciding factor on which CPU was the best, but as the years have progressed, you will find that laptop CPU's have started to become slower, yet still have amazing speed and power comparable to their desktop counterparts.

When you look at a desktop processor, you will also notice how the speed will vary from 2.2GHz to 3.2Ghz. This speed has remained constant for close to 2 years now. But why? This is because a speed over 3.2 Ghz uses an extreme amount of power and generates an amazing amount of heat, which requires very sophisticated cooling methods that cause more and more noise and yield very diminishing performance increases. The modern processor design is more oriented toward architecture rather than speed. And in doing so, each cycle of the CPU can do more and more for increased performance all the while generating the same amount of heat and using the same amount of power (some cases its even less power consumption)

So the questions are:
-Which do you look at when choosing a processor?
-Which manufacturer has the best processor?
-How do I know if it will meet my demands?

First lets review the manufacturers, Intel and AMD, when choosing a brand of processor, you are also choosing a motherboard since each manufacturer has different slots that their processor fits into. And the other company cannot make a CPU for the other's slot. This can be seen as a disadvantage due to motherboards and processors being nearly bound to each other, but it also poses an advantage. You will very easily find processor/motherboard combo deals, where the CPU is already installed for you and guaranteed to work with the motherboard.

If you are not so lucky to find a motherboard/processor combo deal, then you will have to buy them separately. As of this writing, you will want to buy the motherboard first, and keep the CPU in mind when doing so. If you are buying an AMD processor, you will want a socket AM2 motherboard, if you are buying Intel their latest chipset is the 775. Most likely, if you want to make this new computer of yours future proof, then you will want it to have a PCI-E slot (see November issue on video cards) since motherboards are the main component for your computer and every little bit and byte travels through it. You cannot, simply CANNOT, buy a cheap motherboard. It is pointless to get good components and then skimp out on the motherboard. For quality name-brands are the way to go, and the top-of-the-line brands are ASUS, Gigabyte, and A-Bit in that order. Sure there are a few others, but I would look carefully at them before buying one, as other brands can make high-quality motherboards.

Now that we have a good idea of what to look for in a motherboard, we can look at some processors and RAM now. If you are going to want a beast, you can take a look at the midrange of processors, generally if you have a good midrange processor, its more than enough for your high-quality gaming needs, there is little to NO reason to spend $1000 on a processor. The best balanced ratio for price to performance is about $300 to $400. If you are going to be using your system for 2 years, I would look at some $400 processors, like the Intel Core 2 Duo 6400. or the AMD 64 X2 4800+

Core 2 duo? AMD 64 x2? Am i suggesting a dual core processor? Yes, While hardly any games support dual-core computers, you will notice a huge performance increase if you own one of these mighty processors. The reason is because you are never only running one task at a time, you should be running an anti-virus, firewall, operating system, sometimes an IM all in the background at the same time you are playing a game. All of those tasks normally slow down your game, but on a dual-core processor they are hardly a factor. Should you wait for a quad-core processor then? Absolutely not, all of your desktop tasks will barely use up a single processor, any additional processors over the second will be used on multi-threaded games that support them, which, as I said above, is not very many.

Finally we come to RAM, or random access memory. When choosing RAM you have to factor in your motherboard, and the quality of your games. The quality and speed of your RAM will determine your performance in games, meaning you should spring for that faster DDR2 800 RAM instead of the DDR2 667 RAM. some good high-quality brands are Corsair and OCZ, midrange ram is Kingston. Ideally your new computer should be using DDR2 memory. DDR2 is faster, meaning that the information can have its operations done much quicker from the CPU which EVERY program can benefit from. Unfortunately a motherboard that supports older DDR memory doesn't support DDR2 memory, and this translates into only certain processors, that have the same socket as those motherboards, coexisting with DDR2 memory.

I hope this episode of Hardware Wars has helped you in your guide for a faster, better gaming computer. Check in next month for the finishing touches to that new computer.

[ Post or view comments regarding this article ]