Motherboards Sockets/Chipsets

The motherboards form factor is are one of the standards when choosing to purchase a PC. And choosing what CPU socket on the motherboard determine what type processor it is going to use. The two bridges that connect the CPU to the other parts of the computer—the northbridge and the southbridge are the chipsets. AMD and Intel uses different sockets for these motherboards—socket AM2 for the latest Athlon processors, and socket 775 for Intel’s new line of CPU’s—the Dual Core processors. With Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor in everybody’s mind, it does not mean that AMD should not be on your radar screen. If you want to use Intel or AMD’s multi-core chips you will need to select a motherboard with matching CPU socket.

775 Motherboard
Back in the early days of PC computers, CPU’s used on the motherboards had the same set of pins—the pin grid array (PGA). This totally meant that any processor could be used on any motherboard. This has been slowly replaced by Intel latest CPU socket the LGA. Land Grid Array (LGA) 775 is the latest in Intel’s CPU socket. In this technology it the motherboards sockets pins land in contact with the bottom of the processor package. This latest pin type offers better power distribution to the processor. The risk of the pins being bent is also reduced, as the pins are spring loaded found on the surface of the motherboard. The new features of the motherboard includes HD audio, matrix technology for storage, and PCI-E what gives this new motherboard an edge over the 478 platform.

AM2 Motherboards
When thing about the CPU’s speed and performance the common thing that would spring into our minds is the PC’s processor. And as the microprocessor technology is advancing in huge leaps, manufacturers need to redesign their chips to handle more features and more power to the processors, thereby adding more pins to the microprocessors. For AMD, they used the PGA pin technology. The Socket AM2 based motherboard is based on the Pin Grid Array (PGA) socket.

AMD’s socket AM2 is engineered to provide maximum performance enhancements for AMD’s line of AMD Athlon 64 based systems supporting for the latest PCI express graphics solutions, DDR2 SDRAM’s, and HYPERTRANSPORT.


Leave a Comment