Motherboards - CPU Socket

The major processor manufacturers, AMD & Intel, are constantly waging a battle to offer the quickest, most powerful processors available. Getting more speed & performance out of a comparatively small chip usually requires an alter to the physical dimensions as each new generation of processor is released. Therefore, motherboards need to evolve at the same pace in order to accept the new CPUs.

Back in the day, AMD & Intel processors shared a common CPU socket, but those days were short lived. AMD & Intel have since been travelling down their own, comparatively parallel, paths of performance & speed increases, while using different designs. Selecting a motherboard for a contemporary AMD processor eliminates the use of any Intel processor, & vice versa.

AMD's current offering for desktop processors includes the Athlon 64, which is available in Socket 939 & Socket 754 formats. The number in the names represents the number of pins present on the backside of the CPU that connect to the motherboard's socket. The Socket 939 Athlon 64 therefore has a staggering array of nine hundred & thirty nine small pins to match up with the motherboard's socket. The Chaintech VNF4 Ultra is an example of a Socket 939 motherboard based on NVidia’s NForce4 Ultra chipset expertise. In addition to these sockets, lots of AMD processors, including Athlon XPs, Semprons, & Durons, share the Socket A format, often known as Socket 462 thanks to it having 462 pins for connecting to a motherboard. Socket adapters

Intel's latest offering for their Pentium & Celeron processors, LGA 775, doesn't have pins at all & fundamentally swaps the pins to the motherboard for the socket. Perhaps this design move puts the burden of crooked pin warranty claims on somebody else, but it is unique. The Biostar P4M80-M7 is an example of an LGA 775 motherboard based on the VIA P4M800 chipset. Other Intel processors still on the market utilize the Socket 478 format for Pentium & Celeron processors.

Although most motherboards support CPU socket, some applications benefit from having over processor to tackle the tasks at hand. Servers & high finish workstations are examples where a dual processor method, such as could be run on the Tyan Thunder i7500 motherboard, might make light work of more advanced applications.