A motherboard (system-board) is an important component of your PC, and deserves careful consideration in your buying decision.
Regardless of what tasks you are performing you should consider a Pentium processor based system. One reason is Superscalar Architecture. The Pentium processor is capable of processing multiple instructions simultaneously and has two internal caches (high speed buffer memory set aside for repetitious bytes), one for data and one for instructions, which can be accessed simultaneously. The net result is a significant increase in performance.
In the long run, the investment you make in memory will be the investment with the biggest dividends. Chances are, you'll never need less memory than you start out with - but chances are good that you will end up needing more memory as your computer use evolves and expands.
Fast-Page Mode DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) has been considered the standard type of memory for many years. Performance is measured in nanoseconds. DRAM usually runs at a speed of 70 or 60 nanoseconds.
EDO DRAM (Extended Data Out DRAM) allows the processor to overlap the beginning of one memory cycle with the end of the previous one. While it isn't as fast as standard DRAM on individual cycles, it extends the length of time data is available in memory and reduces the overall number of instructions needing to be processed. Therefore, over several memory cycles, EDO DRAM is significantly faster.
ECC DRAM (Error Checking and Correcting DRAM) is ideal for servers. It is capable of sensing problem data. In a server environment, ECC DRAM becomes a tremendous safety net.
Cache is often referred to as L1 and L2 cache. L1 is the internal cache in the Pentium processor. L2 is called external cache, or SRAM (Static Ram), and is mounted on the motherboard in chips or cache modules. The L2 cache interacts directly with your processor, receiving data from it and sending data to it. It works effectively as a buffer between the processor and the (slower) system RAM by retaining data from one cycle to satisfy requests during future cycles. Because of the relationship that the memory and cache share, the DRAM you choose for your system will determine the type of cache you purchase. Most motherboards come standard with some amount of cache, but you can purchase more. If you are using your computer for high-end applications, such as desktop publishing or CAD/CAM, consider buying the maximum amount of cache your motherboard supports.
PCI core logic chip sets control the bandwidth of your system - the data path between the processor, memory and buses. Intel's new 430FX core chip set, increased bandwidth from 40 MBps to 100 MBps (Megabytes per second). The 430FX also increases the maximum number of PCI slots (see next section) from two or three to four, making your system more expandable. The 430FX's biggest contribution is the enhancement of cache and main memory support. Its compatibility with newer RAM architectures results in a 30% increase in overall performance. Check for the Intel 430FX when purchasing a Pentium based system.
The external bus is how peripherals like modems, scanners, video cards, sound cards and network cards, communicate with the system. The best external bus architecture to date is PCI (Peripheral Controller Interface). A PCI bus is a must for four reasons:
Other benefits of the PCI architecture are that is supports higher transfer rates, and a PCI to PCI bridge (a device which attaches up to ten more PCI slots to the bus).
For backward compatibility with older hardware the ideal system has both PCI and ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) slots on the motherboard.
If you are purchasing a notebook, you might consider PCMCIA bus architecture. PCMCIA will allow you to connect a notebook or laptop computer to devices such as CD-ROMs and modems.
Your system should have two 16550 UART (Universal Asynchronous receiver/transmitter) serial ports. High-speed modems require this standard, which provides higher performance. Parallel ports should be EPP/ECP (Enhanced Parallel Port/Enhanced Capabilities Port), capable of supporting bi-direction communication. The EPP/ECP standard supports transfer rates ten times those of conventional ports.
Some motherboards are now equipped with infrared ports for wireless connections to printers or other peripheral devices.
There are many styles available for cases today: Baby AT, Mid-tower (tower) and Portable Chassis. The advantages of each are listed below:
Baby AT Desktop Chassis
Advantage: Flexibility, expandability for a desktop. Consumes little desk space.
Mid-Tower Chassis
Advantage: Increased expandability, easy access to the inside. Sits vertically and provides extra desk space.
Tower Chassis
Servers are usually housed in a full tower chassis for maximum expandability.
Notebook PC
Advantage: Lightweight and portable
The ideal chassis for the average user has at least three external drive bays (accessible from the front) and one or two internal drive bays (for devices that do not require access from the front). It should have controls on the front of the case, including a power switch, reset button, power LED (light emitting diode), and a hard drive LED at a minimum.
When you choose a storage device and device interface, you should take into account the work you are performing. If you are using graphics-intensive applications, like desktop publishing or CAD/CAM, you will need a large hard drive, or even multiples drives to store data. For file servers, it is common to use multiple SCSI hard drives that are mirrored.
E-IDE
Enhanced Integrated Device Electronics (Fast ATA) drives perform just as well as SCSI-2 counterparts on stand-alone systems due to a fast transfer rate of up to 16.7MBps. E-IDE drives support up to 8.4GB and can connect up to 4 devices. This drive interface is ideal for stand-alone computer systems.
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) can organize simultaneous reads and pending data requests for maximum efficiency. This is ideal for a networked system where many users are accessing the hard drive on a server. It also supports mirroring two devices with identical data, to circumvent drive failure. Another application for SCSI is daisy chaining, the routing of data through devices lined by a SCSI cable. Up to seven devices can be attached to a single SCSI-2 adapter. There are three types of SCSI formats available:
1. SCSI-2 transfers 10 MBps using an 8-bit bus.
2. Fast/Wide transfers 20MBps on a 16-bit bus.
3. Ultra SCSI transfers 40 MBps on a 16-bit bus.
Data Transfer Rate, is the rate at which data is read from, or written to, the drive in MegaBytes per second.
Average Access Time is a cross between average seek time - the amount of time it takes the hard disk to move its read/write heads over its platters (storage surface), and average latency - the amount of time it takes the hard disk to spin the platters until the appropriate portions of the tracks are beneath the heads. A good average access time is 9 milliseconds.
Burst Data Transfer Rate, or External Transfer Rate, is the speed at which data is read from the drive buffer. The drive buffer is cache memory which provides faster access by storing data from disk reads/writes.
Sustained Transfer Rate, or Internal Transfer Rate, reflects the transfer of the drive when the disk cache is not being utilized.
CD-ROM drives are becoming a universal medium as their ability for storing large capacity at low costs is recognized. Much software today is only available on CD-ROM. 6X CD-ROM drives have a transfer rate of 900 KBps and are ideal for smooth video playback and standard or advanced graphics applications as well as Windows based databases.
There are other options available for backup, archiving and transporting of data.
Digit Audio Tape (DAT) Drives where speed is a concern (as in networks), DAT is the best backup solution. It is a sequential streaming tape device with capacities of 2, 4 or 8 GB and faster access speeds than QIC-80 tape.
QIC-80 (Quarter-Inch-Cartridge) is still the most cost-effective backup solution. This streaming tape device will allow you to backup up to 1.4GB. It is slower than DAT, and is often the preferred solution for stand-alone PCs and workstations.
Travan is the latest streaming tape device, and uses a different cartridge technology that QIC. It has a larger capacity, with the TR2 holding up to 800 MB, and the TR3 holding up to 3.2GB of data.
Recordable CD-ROMs use laser technology to write to a disk which holds 650MB. This is ideal for long term storage with easy access. These devices are actually a Write Once Read Many (WORM) device, and requires an authoring tool to write the data. It is commonly used to make masters for software distribution.
PD/CD-ROM is a dual media device which enables you to read CD-ROM discs and write to a rewritable optical disk which holds up to 650MB of data.
Choosing the perfect video system for your computer is a tough problem. First choose a monitor that suits your needs and then choose a video card that will transform data into images at the size and resolution of your chosen monitor.
15" monitors have become the industry standard. Price reductions on 17" monitors have brought the industry ever closer to a new standard. Larger monitors 20" to 21", are ideal for CAD/CAM or other graphics-intensive applications, like high-end desktop publishing.
Non-Interlaced (NI) means that only one pass is required to display an image at maximum resolution. This replaces interlaced, which required two passes for maximum resolution screen refresh.
Refresh Rate is the rate at which a screen refreshes an image. A higher refresh rate makes a smoother picture that is easier on the eyes. Monitors running below 72Hz may cause eye fatigue or headaches.
Energy Star is the government "green" compliance standard. Compliant monitors consume minimal energy when not being used.
15" monitors should support a minimum of 800x600 in non-interlaced mode at a refresh rate of 72Hz. Most monitors of this size offer maximum resolutions of 1024x768. Typically, 15" monitors are used for spreadsheet, database, and word processing applications. 17" monitors at 1024x768 non-interlaced and 72Hz give you a few extra viewable inches. They are better for basic applications, and allow you to work more easily with graphics applications.
Several types of Notebook screens are available. Active-matrix gives you a crisp picture and a fantastic color display which is viewable from virtually any angle. This makes is ideal for sales presentations and business applications. Dual-scan is the solution for the traveler who values the privacy of a screen which can only be viewed head-on. It is also less expensive than active-matrix.
The video card you select should also be tailored to your tasks. For instance, if you use software that is extremely graphics-intensive, you need a high-end video card that is faster and has more memory. Video cards process an incredible amount of data and the more memory you have on the video card, the greater your computer's ability to display higher resolutions and more colors.
AVI (Audio/Video Interlace) is a video format that interleaves alternating audio and video data. The format is easily compressed and decompressed.
MPEC (Motion Picture Experts Group) is a compression scheme which results in near VHS-quality motion video.
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a format for still photos. This format compresses data to 1/10 its normal size and is used in the MPEG compression process.
Codec (Compression/Decompression) is a process which looks for redundancies between frames, eliminates redundancies, and compresses the file.
RAMDAC (RAM Digital/Analog Converter) is an accelerator chip which is capable of converting data to on-screen images.
DCI (Display Control Interface) support, also called Direct Draw, is a driver used to locate available video resources in order to route data to the point of quickest processing.
For instance, if the DCI gets data which requires the processing of digital video, it goes to the graphics accelerator and looks for the right tool. If the resources are not available on the graphics accelerator, the data is sent to the Windows GDA (Graphic Device Interface).
Video Scaling is your video card's ability to re-size an image for the optimum fit at the best resolution.
Video Capture is the ability to capture film clips and stills, and place them on a VCR. This feature requires a special video capture card.
NTSC National Television Standards Committee is the signal specification which is the standard for TV's in North America.
The term multimedia is generally used to mean a computer system with a CD-ROM drive, sound card, and speakers. If you want a multimedia system, first select a CD-ROM drive. Then add a good sound card and speakers and a microphone. For a home system, multimedia is a must. You'll need it for CD-ROM educational and entertainment software. Many office systems also need sound for multimedia presentations.
With advancements in video technology stealing the spotlight, sound technology has received little attention. But there have been advancements in the overall quality of sound cards. High-end sound cards are relatively inexpensive and full-featured. You can't fully enjoy multimedia presentations or games without great sound.
Sound processing started with FM Synthesis processing. The FM Synthesizer is the predecessor to DSP solutions. It offers less realistic sound synthesis but is required for older DOS games.
Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) are special chips designed for high-speed integer calculations. This means hi-fi, real-time sound. Many DSPs are software upgradable, allowing you to add "sound effects" to the sound library loaded onto the card by the manufacturer.
General MIDI (Musical Instrument Device Interface) offers 128 standard instrument patches from piano to guitar to violin. Synthesizers connect to your computer via a shared MIDI/Joystick Port.
Multi-layering is the assigning of more than one sample to a note of a patch.
Patch is a number slot in a wavetable that represents a musical instrument. When a request is made for specific instrument, it is requested by its patch number. A Patch Librarian is used to organize patches into banks where they can be saved to disk or the sound card's wavetable ROM.
Polyphony describes the number of notes or voices a synthesizer can play. Eight-voice polyphony equals an eight-note chord.
Sample is a digital recording of a single instrument playing a single patch.
Stereo Amplifier boosts the signal to the speaker-out jack.
Surround Sound provides crisp clear 3D sound, giving you a sense of being in the music rather than listening to it at a distance.
Wavetable is a library of prerecorded samples representing the 128 instruments/sounds that a musical keyboard is capable of producing. This library is stored on a chip called a Wavetable ROM. A Wavetable Synthesizer, using a sample editor, takes samples and generates MIDI output.
A low-end card will have FM synthesis which will offer reasonable sound quality. A good mid-range to high-end card should offer noise-free, CD-quality audio playback, crisp recording capability and a wavetable as an option.
Multimedia speakers can make or bread the overall multimedia experience. The perfect speakers should offer both very clear highs and rich bass sound. Buying poor speakers will diminish even the best sound card output.
What constitutes a suitable set of speakers depends on how the speakers will be used. If you a buying a system which will be used for basic Windows applications the 5-10 watt range is ample. For personal entertainment, an 80 watt speaker solution is desirable. If you are creating multimedia presentations to be shown in a conference room, 120 watt speakers would be best.
Benefits of a good sound system:
-Voice and sound and effects in games and entertainment software.
-Built-in Windows 95 sounds.
-Voice and music on Web sites.
A speaker system should have woofers for medium to low frequency sounds and tweeters for treble sounds. A separate subwoofer is designed to offer much richer bass sounds. Optional SRS (surround sound) further enhances the total multimedia experience.
Look for separate bass and treble controls, and balance controls, as well as volume controls. Some speakers feature headphone jacks for a more individual experience and line-in jacks for multiple audio source.
Some vendors package a microphone and headphones with their multimedia kit. It is safe to assume that the components are designed solely for general use. For specific needs, there are options for integrated solutions, such as keyboards with multimedia/SRS surround sound built-in.
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