µATX Overview: Prelude to a Roundup
by Gary Key on August 7, 2007 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Introduction
Our upcoming series of µATX articles has traveled a long road (Ed: that's an understatement!). When we first envisioned a long-overdue look at the µATX form factor motherboards, we thought it would be your typical motherboard roundup with maybe a twist or two tossed in to keep it interesting. One thing led to another and before you knew it, our minds started to run rampant with additional items that we felt were important for the article. This led to scope creep and those of us who manage projects - or who have been unlucky enough to be on a project that has featuritis - know what happens next.
That's right, we over-emphasized the new article features to the detriment of our primary focus, providing a motherboard roundup that featured the often ignored but market leading µATX form factor. What started out with adding a couple of features such as IGP video quality comparisons and midrange CPU performance turned into a maze of thoughts and ideas that led us to believe it would be quite easy to add additional tests without affecting the overall schedule too much. We were wrong, but we hope that our future motherboard articles will be better for it.
How did we get stuck in the quagmire of µATX hell? It began with innocent thoughts of adding budget to midrange CPU coverage, low to midrange graphics comparisons against the IGP solutions, High Definition playback comparisons utilizing not one but each competing standard, Windows XP versus Vista versus Linux, onboard audio versus add-in cards, and even tests of input devices and external storage items. It ended with our project scope changing from being motherboard specific to platform encompassing.
We started down that path but despite periodic excitement, at times we also ended up with a dreaded case of paralysis by analysis syndrome. Don't get us wrong: we do not regret the effort that has been expended on this roundup; however, we sincerely regret the time it has taken to complete it and we apologize to those of you who have been waiting months for this information. It turns out that we ignored one of our favorite quotes from C. Gordon Bell, "The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there." That is one of the many factors that caused us problems, as it became quite obvious during testing that getting all of this equipment to work together and then benchmarking as planned was not exactly going to be a walk in the park.
We have been constantly waiting on that one BIOS or driver to fix a malady of problems that we've discovered along the way. The manufacturers would ask - sometimes plead - for us to retest or wait as "that problem is being solved and a fix should be available immediately". Immediately it turns means days and weeks, not hours. We also received several product revisions during the course of testing that required us to throw out the old results and start again. In the end, we hope our efforts paid off and at least we have the knowledge that every supplier has had ample opportunity to fix any ills with their product.
Our experiences with a wide variety of components will be discussed extensively in a series of articles to be published over the coming month. However, at the end of the day, the star of this show is still the motherboard. If the CPU is the brain of a computer and the video card is its eyes, then the motherboard is the central nervous system. It truly is the central focal point of the system and having one that works correctly makes it really easy to put a system together.
As such, we are changing our testing emphasis from being primarily performance based to a combination of performance, features, stability, support, and those intangibles that we experience during testing that might set one board apart from another. While performance is important, does a few tenths of second or an additional two frames per second in a benchmark really mean that much when you cannot get a USB port working due to a crappy BIOS release or your system does not properly recover from S3 sleep state when you are set to record the last episode of the Sopranos? We thought as much also, so we are changing our vantage point on motherboard testing.
While we are performance enthusiasts at heart, the fastest board available is not worth much if the included features do not work as advertised or the board constantly crashes when trying to use an application. Our testing emphasis, especially between boards based on the same chipset, will be focused on stability and compatibility with a wide range of peripherals in both stock and overclocked conditions. Speaking of features, we will place a renewed emphasis on networking, storage, memory, and audio performance. More importantly, we will provide additional analysis on overclocking, energy consumption, cooling capabilities, layout, and power management features where applicable.
We also want to take this opportunity to put the manufacturers on notice: we will not countenance delays, patches, and numerous updates again, particularly on products that are available in the retail market! If a lemon of a motherboard gets released to consumers and it needs more BIOS tuning or perhaps an entirely new revision, we are going to do our best to point this fact out to the readers. We understand that it can be difficult to get every single peripheral to work properly, especially with new devices coming out all the time, but when a motherboard fails to work properly with a large number of USB devices, memory types, GPUs, etc. that product shouldn't be on the market.
At the end of this journey we will provide three different platform recommendations based on the various components we have utilized in testing. Our platforms are designed around HTPC, Gaming, and Home/Office centric configurations with a heavy emphasis on the systems being quiet, reliable, and affordable. Okay, we blew the budget on the HTPC configuration but we will provide several alternatives to help control costs on that particular buildup. Let's find out what else is changing and exactly what will be included in our comprehensive review of the µATX motherboards and surrounding technologies.
 |
That's right, we over-emphasized the new article features to the detriment of our primary focus, providing a motherboard roundup that featured the often ignored but market leading µATX form factor. What started out with adding a couple of features such as IGP video quality comparisons and midrange CPU performance turned into a maze of thoughts and ideas that led us to believe it would be quite easy to add additional tests without affecting the overall schedule too much. We were wrong, but we hope that our future motherboard articles will be better for it.
How did we get stuck in the quagmire of µATX hell? It began with innocent thoughts of adding budget to midrange CPU coverage, low to midrange graphics comparisons against the IGP solutions, High Definition playback comparisons utilizing not one but each competing standard, Windows XP versus Vista versus Linux, onboard audio versus add-in cards, and even tests of input devices and external storage items. It ended with our project scope changing from being motherboard specific to platform encompassing.
We started down that path but despite periodic excitement, at times we also ended up with a dreaded case of paralysis by analysis syndrome. Don't get us wrong: we do not regret the effort that has been expended on this roundup; however, we sincerely regret the time it has taken to complete it and we apologize to those of you who have been waiting months for this information. It turns out that we ignored one of our favorite quotes from C. Gordon Bell, "The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there." That is one of the many factors that caused us problems, as it became quite obvious during testing that getting all of this equipment to work together and then benchmarking as planned was not exactly going to be a walk in the park.
We have been constantly waiting on that one BIOS or driver to fix a malady of problems that we've discovered along the way. The manufacturers would ask - sometimes plead - for us to retest or wait as "that problem is being solved and a fix should be available immediately". Immediately it turns means days and weeks, not hours. We also received several product revisions during the course of testing that required us to throw out the old results and start again. In the end, we hope our efforts paid off and at least we have the knowledge that every supplier has had ample opportunity to fix any ills with their product.
Our experiences with a wide variety of components will be discussed extensively in a series of articles to be published over the coming month. However, at the end of the day, the star of this show is still the motherboard. If the CPU is the brain of a computer and the video card is its eyes, then the motherboard is the central nervous system. It truly is the central focal point of the system and having one that works correctly makes it really easy to put a system together.
As such, we are changing our testing emphasis from being primarily performance based to a combination of performance, features, stability, support, and those intangibles that we experience during testing that might set one board apart from another. While performance is important, does a few tenths of second or an additional two frames per second in a benchmark really mean that much when you cannot get a USB port working due to a crappy BIOS release or your system does not properly recover from S3 sleep state when you are set to record the last episode of the Sopranos? We thought as much also, so we are changing our vantage point on motherboard testing.
While we are performance enthusiasts at heart, the fastest board available is not worth much if the included features do not work as advertised or the board constantly crashes when trying to use an application. Our testing emphasis, especially between boards based on the same chipset, will be focused on stability and compatibility with a wide range of peripherals in both stock and overclocked conditions. Speaking of features, we will place a renewed emphasis on networking, storage, memory, and audio performance. More importantly, we will provide additional analysis on overclocking, energy consumption, cooling capabilities, layout, and power management features where applicable.
We also want to take this opportunity to put the manufacturers on notice: we will not countenance delays, patches, and numerous updates again, particularly on products that are available in the retail market! If a lemon of a motherboard gets released to consumers and it needs more BIOS tuning or perhaps an entirely new revision, we are going to do our best to point this fact out to the readers. We understand that it can be difficult to get every single peripheral to work properly, especially with new devices coming out all the time, but when a motherboard fails to work properly with a large number of USB devices, memory types, GPUs, etc. that product shouldn't be on the market.
At the end of this journey we will provide three different platform recommendations based on the various components we have utilized in testing. Our platforms are designed around HTPC, Gaming, and Home/Office centric configurations with a heavy emphasis on the systems being quiet, reliable, and affordable. Okay, we blew the budget on the HTPC configuration but we will provide several alternatives to help control costs on that particular buildup. Let's find out what else is changing and exactly what will be included in our comprehensive review of the µATX motherboards and surrounding technologies.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
42 Comments
View All Comments
larson0699 - Wednesday, August 8, 2007 - link
If speaking on OEM machines, then by all means, touché. I would imagine that most of the AT/DT audience are builders, however, which gives us the choice NOT to install an OS that feels like Norton all over again.. Gamers especially feel this.
Anywho, for a lot of us Vista is NOT the future, and until more is known of '7', we may well stay with 2K/XP for a loooooong time.
At least you use Linux in your tests as well, but again.. SUSE??
Myrandex - Friday, August 10, 2007 - link
No reason for the hate towards SuSE. That is my fav. distro by far!TA152H - Tuesday, August 7, 2007 - link
I'm not sure how Micro-ATX is automatically low cost. Considering how well SFF computers sell, and how poorly full sized computers do by comparison, I think the main reason (OK, you're about to think "duh") is the size! But, yet, you've made it low cost and low power. Size matters!But, really, I think it's interesting you're going with quiet and low power, but I also think you could make a point for higher cost machines as well. Really, the smaller motherboard should be faster, not slower, since the memory is closer to the controller. Granted, you can't use as many expansion cards, but who uses two video cards anyway? The motherboards come with so many features, there really is not that you can not put in a Micro-ATX. A better video card, a better sound card. Could be high end depending upon the choices, and the choice of processors and memory, right? So, I think you'll have some performance freaks getting this factor too, it's so nice to have a small computer instead of some desk hog. And under desk sucks because you can't see the lights, which still give useful information. And, of course, it's easier to put in CDs and DVDs if it's on your desk, instead of under.
Also, much more interesting to me, although probably not to the readers here, are mini-ITX based machines, particularly the ultra low power ones from Centaur/VIA. These things are great in the summer, and now have some really interesting parts (mine is a year old, and kind of slow). How about 1.2 GHz at 3.5 watts max power? It's a slow 1.2 GHz, but still, it's a great surfing/email, etc... machine. Admittedly, it's not the main focus of this site, but it's still a very, very, very useful machine, and much better than the mainstream Intel/AMD solutions for a large subset of people. Except in the winter in the cold regions, I guess. It might be interesting for you guys to review too. From personal experience, using this machine instead of my older surfer (and underclocked Celeron 1100/100 running at 733/66 and AIW 9000) keeps my bedroom so much cooler in the summer, it's terrific. It's a bit slow though at 800 MHz, but the new ones use considerably less power, and are 50% faster! I bet a lot of people would be interested in this type of article.
hardwareguy - Tuesday, August 7, 2007 - link
What's with the expensive/unknown speaker choice? It seems there are very few places in the USA that sell these speakers and they are pretty pricey. There are also a few reviews of the ($200) M200s on Newegg where the reviewers were unable to contact the Swans to replace a defective product.I wasn't even able to find acculine's website, just the audio insider's product page. I would definitely not feel comfortable spending that kind of money on a company that I can't even find contact info for. Perhaps you should stick to some less eccentric product choices in the future.
Pirks - Tuesday, August 7, 2007 - link
From the article:"Unfortunately, we were hoping to receive the Toshiba SD-H903A HD-DVD writer to compare directly to the new low cost Pioneer BDC-S02BK Blu-ray writer but our sample has been delayed."
Pioneer BDC-S02BK is NOT a Blu-ray writer. It is a DVD writer that can READ Blu-ray discs. It can NOT write to them. Please fix the article.
yyrkoon - Tuesday, August 7, 2007 - link
I am not sure it makes sense to test the ABIT NF-M2 nView. I have been going on from time to time about it, I own it, and I really like the board, but ABIT discontinued it sometime ago. I personally would like to see your results, but owning one, I already know where it stands stability wise (second to none ring a bell ?).Anyhow, it is probably too late, but perhaps one of the replacements would be better suited ? Granted, the replacements all seem to have slightly less features, and I have no idea how stable they are . . .
8steve8 - Tuesday, August 7, 2007 - link
we are curious about onboard video performance, what about system performance(non-games) while using onboard video... does it suffer?(since memory and memory bandwidth is shared)
please please dont bother talking about same-chipset performance differences of boards if its close...
the last thing anyone wants anymore is 20 pages of gamming benchmarks comparing 15 boards all using the same chipsets... we all know the performance is basically identical,, the only thing we are concerned between boards of the same chipset is reliability/stability , maybe overclocking and features.. like does it have DHCP-DVI. or like does it use a cheap via firewire chip, or a nice Ti firewire chip... what about networking controller.. is it pci or pcie...onboard sound quality? optical output?..
raid... just 1/0 or does it do raid 5...
what about data corruption... some earlier nforce chipsets and earlier via chipsets caused data corruption with cirtain drivers...remember early via chipsets not properly implimenting pci to intel's spec.. so lots of pci cards had issues, including sound and raid controllers which back then ran on pci.... that is devistating... i have an old nforce4 ultra AMD board which consistantly corrupts data on harddrives...i would gladly take 10% less performance if i know the board will operate properly.
the problem is these issues dont really become well known until months after the product is out... long after we bought it...
i belive i can trust intel southbridges, and i think the new nvidia 430 and newer sata controllers are trustable, but can this can be confirmed?
do all new boards have solid state capacitors? will they? should they?
the intel board probably looks the best of the bunch... the g33TL
has DHCP-DVI with onboard video capable of warcraft3@1600x1200@30fps (i know cause my g965 can)
has Intel Gigabit networking
has an ich9r southbridge w/6sata.
has a bios which properly does sleep/standby etc... ?
has audio with optical output.
people might say intel boards are picky with ram... but thats cause they buy crappy ram... like corsair and kingston hyperX .. DDR2-800 as defined by jedec uses 1.8V... crappy ram requires more to opperate... and if u look at the "gamer" ram.. it all needs like 2.1 volts.. its utter crap... thast why intel boards dont work with that ram.
ive never heard of an issue with intel boards and ram that meets jedec spec...
but of course they cant overclock... so thats a big downer for some.. (but definately not all)
some in the industry are calling for mainstream adoption of ECC memory.
some things of note... you can use unbuffered ecc ram with an amd system / server on the cheap..
athlon x2's memory controller has suppored ecc for a long time... maybe since the origional x86-64 cpu.
you cannot do that with mainstream intel chipsets.... i dont think u can do it with any intel uatx board.
but the x38 and 975x might do ecc, im not sure.
nsparadox - Tuesday, August 7, 2007 - link
I understand that you're excited to cover a lot of material. Keep in mind that many of your readers will, in the end, scan maybe the first paragraph of the introduction, check out their favorite benchmarks or concerns (noise, heat, etc)., and then move straight to the conclusion.Rather than scientifically test every single aspect of a "platform", maybe it's best to play with some of these concepts and make a few generalizations based on your experience. That should leave you with ample time and focus to hone in on the issues that you think users care about the most.
Or, focus on a single platform and do your broad but shallow scan (choose between building the best HTPC, LAN box for gaming, quiet computer for gaming, quiet computer for productivity, but don't do all of them). Go ahead and write multiple articles. I think there's plenty you can write about each platform, especially if you focus on price/performance tradeoffs.
The beauty of the DIY desktop PC is that everything is componentized. Take advantage of it with your reviews!
Frumious1 - Tuesday, August 7, 2007 - link
When readers skip a lot of the material, that's their own choice. I certainly wouldn't want to purchase a motherboard without a decent amount of information on how well the BIOS and other features work - especially if I'm looking at a uATX board with IGP. Let Gary get all the articles done and then see how it all comes together. I'm not sure how he's going to cover all the additional content, but I won't judge until it's out there. :)mostlyprudent - Tuesday, August 7, 2007 - link
I find myself skimming and skipping when there is a drawn out series of reviews that are essentially the same (i.e. the cooler and now the PSU reviews here). Once I read the methodology article for the PSU reviews, I read the first review or two in its entirety, but now I skim the first page or tow, check the benchmark graphs/tables and read the conclusion.After reading this article, I get the impression that we are not simply going to get a string of motherboard reviews, but a series of unique articels that examine groups of MBs by chipset and other aspects of the HTPC system (cases, storage, displays, etc.). If that's the case, I personally will enjoy a full detailed read of each article