Chipset: Why Is It So Important?

A motherboard chipset determines the specification of the motherboard. Simply put, it controls the features and abilities of the motherboard. If you understand what chipset a motherboard uses, you know a good deal about its potential features and abilities before ever reading the motherboard’s specifications.

On motherboard that is based on the Intel CPU, you can always find a specific pair of chips known as the northbridge and southbridge. Together the northbridge and southbridge handle all the communication between the processor, RAM, video options, PCI slots, BIOS, ATA controller, USB ports, integrated modem, integrated LAN port etc. Because they control the communication between the CPU and all the devices, they indirectly play a part in determining the system performance.

Northbridge

In Intel chipset, the northbridge typically handles communications between the CPU, RAM and the graphical interface (namely AGP or PCI Express). It also determines the Front Side Bus (FSB) speed. Because different processors and RAM have different design architecture, a northbridge will typically work with only one or two classes of CPUs and generally only one type of RAM.

In short, the northbridge determines:

• the type of processor (AMD or Intel? Socket 939 or AM2? Etc)
• the type of RAM (DDR, DDR2 or DDR3?)
• the type of graphics card (AGP or PCI Express? SLI or CrossFire?)
• the type of hard drive interface (IDE, SATA 1.0 or SATA 2.0?)

In AMD chipset, the memory controller is incorporated into the die (because of HyperTransport technology) rather than on the northbridge. As such, the main function of the northbridge is simply to serve as a bridge between the CPU and the graphics card.

Southbridge

The southbridge, also known as the I/O Controller Hub (ICH), is a chip that implements the “slower” capabilities of the motherboard. In short, it is used to manage basic input/output (I/O) such as

• Universal Serial Bus (USB)
• serial port
• IDE ports
• integrated audio
• integrated video etc,

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