Cpu-motherboard compatibility.

[april]

i am a newbie. i don't really have the knowledge or experience needed to start a thread of hardware discussion. but when i bought my PC a few years ago, i bought a Intel core 2 duo 7300 2.66gh CPU and a gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L motherboard on shops suggestion. however, after i bought that someone told me that it would have been better if i bought a Intel motherboard, cause it has the best compatibility with Intel CPU.

i am sure many other people who like me don't know much, faced same kind of situations.

what i want to know is, is it true, or does the best compatibility only depend on chipset? i would like to know the factors on which a motherboard and a CPU's compatibility depend. i would also like to know the compatibility of motherboards per CPU. AMD and Intel both.

i am sure that this discussion will help many others like me. or at least it would help me, that's my main purpose!

 

[avinandan012]

intel releases a Chipset for particular processor(s) who whoever(be it ASUS,Gigabyte,Intel .. ) implements that chipset in the mobo, that mobo will be compatible to those CPUs.

 

[d6bmg]

All motheboards made for Intel proccessors by different companies are based on Intel chipsets. So, as long as you are getting same socket processor and motherboard there won't b any problem regarding compatibility.
And Intel is not the best motherboard maker in the market. They make some good value for money low and mid end motherboard. But for top end motherboard Intel is very bad and should always be avoided.
Talking about the processor + motherboard combo you are using, they are good. So don't worry anything about it.

 

[april]

All motheboards made for Intel proccessors by different companies are based on Intel chipsets. So, as long as you are getting same socket processor and motherboard there won't b any problem regarding compatibility.
And Intel is not the best motherboard maker in the market. They make some good value for money low and mid end motherboard. But for top end motherboard Intel is very bad and should always be avoided.
Talking about the processor + motherboard combo you are using, they are good. So don't worry anything about it.

thanks, but i was thinking of upgrading.

 

[Cilus]

Then create a new thread in PC Components / Configurations by filling up the questions present in *www.thinkdigit.com/forum/pc-compon...new-pc-help-answer-these-questions-first.html

 

[aloodum]

@@ April: It was a long time back when intel made motherboards across budgets stood out in terms of reliability and cost..yes they were costlier than their counterparts and there were reasons too. Their northbridge coolers were better, capacitors sourced from better places, thoughtfully designed /properly spaced items and sometimes better explained BIOS items in help, respect to what the limited competition was offering at that point in India.... Somehow this reliability was molded into compatibility by various people including dealers, who tried to sell off the costlier Intel boards of grounds of "100% compatible" rather than the "chipset/cheap set" mobo. Over the years almost all rivals have superseeded intel in offering quality mobos.And now intel is relegated to to a no-nonsense no-frills no gizmo zone.
Compatibility, in our case of cpu and mobo, depends on revision of core chipset used in the motherboards and the current bios version officially supported by the board. That is why all makers make it a point to list out compatible cpu/ram in the specification page(s).
For eg, some motherboard based on the intel 945 chipset based motherboards could only support till E4XXX series core 2 duo , limited by the 800 FSB , while another motherboard of the same company or rival offered a 945 chipset board that supported your range of processors(E6X and E7X series) and some even claimed to support for newer 1333 Mhz FSB( unofficially via overcloking)... the reason being the 945 chipset itself was available in various flavors 945-G,GC,P.PL etc...

Then there is another thought of optimal utilization offered.Like say a CPU's FSB is 1066 mhz yet the memory frequency is stuck at 667Mhz. Obviosly this would result in performance penalty when compared to say another mobo which offers support to run 1066 mhz ram( natively or via ocing).
Another case that i remember was support for dual channel memory in context of AMD cpus and low end chipsets made by rivals like Nvidia...though the onboard was some (lame) geforce , the board lacked support for dual channel memory and was heavily fined in the max mem speed support

Phew! that was long ..hope you got some of that gibberish! Cheers!!