[Anaheimduck]

Hi to all and a very merry Xmas
Can anybody please tell me what the difference is between different costing mainboards for example I am using a SKT 478 board possibly with a fault so want to replace and increase the CPU Looking around I notice some boards are around £30-£40 and others are around £90_£120+ Is there a big difference
Regards

 

[Draken]

The big difference is the ability to upgrade later on, overclocking ability and the nice little extras. The more expensive boards tend to be able to take a better CPU later and faster RAM speeds and overclock nicely. So it depends on what you want to use the PC for

 

[Alex Ethridge]

Each user has his own preferences. Personally, I don't upgrade a processor unless one 'falls into my lap' so I tend to buy a board without considering later processor updates. My general rule is that if you can't double the processor capability, you are hard pressed to see a difference in performance.

I've found the boards with intel chipsets tend to be more stable, also more expensive. I don't have enough technical knowledge to understand why; but, it seems the full-sized boards tend to perform better than what I know as 'baby' boards. If you have any PATA drives you want to continue using, you may want to get a board that supports both PATA and SATA. Another consideration is the type of memory. There is DDR and DDR2, DDR2 being faster.

When you start looking at features like these, you will see the full-sized boards that support multiple drive types, faster memory and have intel chipsets are the more expensive ones.

Oh, and don't forget the number of expansion slots is important. And there is a difference in the types of vedeo cards some boards support.