Are there "Good" and "Bad" Chipsets?

[JohanKjeldahl7]

I was wondering if there are Good and Bad Chipsets or if they just have more/less features? Is a (for Socket 1151) e.g. Z-Chipset better than a B Chipset? Or does it just have more features?

[dizmo]

More or less features depending on the chipset. There isn't a bad chipset persay, just the right chipset for what you're trying to accomplish.

[highlandcar]

The sandy bridge chipset is a good budget chipset

 was thinking of the wrong thing whoops 

Edited January 8, 2021 by highlandcar
I am not smart

[8tg]

We really haven’t seen bad chipsets since intel and amd went solo with theirs.

Before when SiS, Via, Nvidia, ATI, etc were making actual motherboard chipsets there were some genuinely bad chipsets. Ones that didn’t support the same range of hardware as others, some that lacked certain controllers so they spoofed the controller (ie many agp boards that ran agp over pci), chipsets that didn’t support much of anything in the way of rear I/o, some with god awful as in genuinely bad audio features, chipsets with no cpu or ram control features for adjusting memory or cpu voltage or speed, and not just as in you can’t OC but as in certain chipsets would require only specific FSB speed processors and only specific speed and voltage ram.

As soon as that stopped around the introduction of the end of LGA 775, that’s when it became more about features but a low end chipset would still support everything hardware wise and not throw a fit about it.

 

[JohanKjeldahl7]

3 minutes ago, 8tg said:

We really haven’t seen bad chipsets since intel and amd went solo with theirs.

Before when SiS, Via, Nvidia, ATI, etc were making actual motherboard chipsets there were some genuinely bad chipsets. Ones that didn’t support the same range of hardware as others, some that lacked certain controllers so they spoofed the controller (ie many agp boards that ran agp over pci), chipsets that didn’t support much of anything in the way of rear I/o, some with god awful as in genuinely bad audio features, chipsets with no cpu or ram control features for adjusting memory or cpu voltage or speed, and not just as in you can’t OC but as in certain chipsets would require only specific FSB speed processors and only specific speed and voltage ram.

As soon as that stopped around the introduction of the end of LGA 775, that’s when it became more about features but a low end chipset would still support everything hardware wise and not throw a fit about it.

 

 

3 minutes ago, highlandcar said:

The sandy bridge chipset is a good budget chipset

 

8 minutes ago, dizmo said:

More or less features depending on the chipset. There isn't a bad chipset persay, just the right chipset for what you're trying to accomplish.

Thank you all very much for answering and explaining! I now know a lot more about chipsets. Thank you!

[8tg]

1 minute ago, JohanKjeldahl7 said:

 

 

Thank you all very much for answering and explaining! I now know a lot more about chipsets. Thank you!

Fun fact, there exists platforms that have no chipset. Like AM1 for kabini APUs. All of the features are integrated into the processor.

Meaning if someone bought an Athlon 5350 and AM1 board in 2014, there is a possibly they could still upgrade it, if someone made a processor for it.

These are called SOCs or “system on chip” processors.

All an AM1 motherboard is, is the slots and ports connecting directly to the socket.

Intel or AMD could make a new AM1 processor at any time and the only real thing holding it back would be DDR3 memory physically, but it would be possible to use an adapter for ddr3 to ddr4 because the memory controller is on the processor and the power delivery is controlled independently.

 

Chipsets are dumb and SOCs were the future we deserved and never got.

 

[JohanKjeldahl7]

4 minutes ago, 8tg said:

Fun fact, there exists platforms that have no chipset. Like AM1 for kabini APUs. All of the features are integrated into the processor.

Meaning if someone bought an Athlon 5350 and AM1 board in 2014, there is a possibly they could still upgrade it, if someone made a processor for it.

These are called SOCs or “system on chip” processors.

All an AM1 motherboard is, is the slots and ports connecting directly to the socket.

Intel or AMD could make a new AM1 processor at any time and the only real thing holding it back would be DDR3 memory physically, but it would be possible to use an adapter for ddr3 to ddr4 because the memory controller is on the processor and the power delivery is controlled independently.

 

Chipsets are dumb and SOCs were the future we deserved and never got.

 

Well, that sounds much better, never have to buy a new motherboaard again right? Why did they stop making these? To sell more motherboards?

 

Edit: Wow this is my 100th post

Edited January 8, 2021 by JohanKjeldahl7

[mariushm]

The role of a chipset has diminished a lot - most of the functionality is now built into the processors. 

The chipset used to mean actual chip set - two chips, northbridge and southbridge ... northbridge had memory controller, agp / pci-e controller and connection to southbridge,  southbridge dealt with peripherals (pci, isa, usb controller, ide, floppy , sata controllers, firewire, irda and connection to bios)

Nowadays the processors have the memory and pci-e controllers built in, and some processors also have some USB and SATA controllers built in. The chipset now is just one chip which provides the connection to legacy hardware (ps2 , printer port, serial, keyboard) and has extra usb, sata controllers and pci-e controllers. 

In theory, you could have a super basic chipset that  has only role of connecting cpu to the legacy io chip and the bios and have everything else supplied by a processor. 

 

So you can't really mess much with modern chipsets.

 

Some chipsets have artificial limitations imposed by the manufacturer (intel , amd) and they're sold at a reduced price for price sensitive markets, or to make other chipsets more profitable/expensive. 

For example, A320 chipset from AMD has reduced features (less pci-e lanes, less usb ports) but also AMD artificially disables overclocking of cpu and limits overclocking of ram - the chipset is aimed at super budget / office computers 

Same for some H series chipsets, where Intel disables overclocking, or other features only for market segmentation.  Or some B series or Q series chipsets from Intel are identical to other chipsets but only have some features unlocked, like raid on the sata controller, or some "business" stuff that's disabled in other chipsets. 

 

[mariushm]

3 minutes ago, JohanKjeldahl7 said:

Well, that sounds much better, never have to buy a new motherboaard again right? Why did they stop making these? To sell more motherboards?

 

Edit: Wow this is my 100th post

You would need new motherboards whenever new technology shows up. For example, when DDR5 becomes popular and cheaper to manufacture compared to DDR4, they'll have to make new processors which support those DDR5 sticks, and most likely there's gonna be extra pins/ contacts required which are not present in the current cpu sockets or not wired to anything, so new motherboard with new cpu sockets would have to be made. 

 

Same with USB 4 - the big plan is to merge usb 4 with thunderbolt, which means you have to somehow be able to route pci-e lanes or video from video card through the usb connector so that usb connector becomes more universal - older motherboards don't have those physical connections on the motherboard, so a new cpu would also have to be helped by a new motherboard

[8tg]

1 minute ago, JohanKjeldahl7 said:

Well, that sounds much better, never have to buy a new motherboaard again right? Why did they stop making these? To sell more motherboards?

Exactly that

If they made some super dope long term future proof soc board, you would never have to buy a new motherboard until a physical standard changed.

It happened with super socket 7 in the. 90’s but kinda in other ways. There was too much longevity in one board, with intel/amd/cyrix/idt etc all making processors for it, and nobody making processors for a new socket for a while, everyone just kept their ss7 boards and it was sort of a standard, everyone had an ss7 board so if you wanted to sell your processor you had to make it for ss 7.

So motherboard sales tanked in return because since the companies making processors needed to sell them, and consumers would only buy super socket 7 processors, they never had to upgrade.

It took actual collaboration between multiple processor manufacturers to break into multiple sockets, and it’s why cyrix ended up getting super sued to death by intel, amd moved to Slot A and Intel went to Slot 1, IDT gave up and became part of IBM, etc  

[JohanKjeldahl7]

3 minutes ago, mariushm said:

The role of a chipset has diminished a lot - most of the functionality is now built into the processors. 

The chipset used to mean actual chip set - two chips, northbridge and southbridge ... northbridge had memory controller, agp / pci-e controller and connection to southbridge,  southbridge dealt with peripherals (pci, isa, usb controller, ide, floppy , sata controllers, firewire, irda and connection to bios)

Nowadays the processors have the memory and pci-e controllers built in, and some processors also have some USB and SATA controllers built in. The chipset now is just one chip which provides the connection to legacy hardware (ps2 , printer port, serial, keyboard) and has extra usb, sata controllers and pci-e controllers. 

In theory, you could have a super basic chipset that  has only role of connecting cpu to the legacy io chip and the bios and have everything else supplied by a processor. 

 

So you can't really mess much with modern chipsets.

 

Some chipsets have artificial limitations imposed by the manufacturer (intel , amd) and they're sold at a reduced price for price sensitive markets, or to make other chipsets more profitable/expensive. 

For example, A320 chipset from AMD has reduced features (less pci-e lanes, less usb ports) but also AMD artificially disables overclocking of cpu and limits overclocking of ram - the chipset is aimed at super budget / office computers 

Same for some H series chipsets, where Intel disables overclocking, or other features only for market segmentation.  Or some B series or Q series chipsets from Intel are identical to other chipsets but only have some features unlocked, like raid on the sata controller, or some "business" stuff that's disabled in other chipsets. 

 

So basically they keep the chipsets with more/less features to keep "controll" of the market and seperate gaming boards from office/buisness boards?

[JohanKjeldahl7]

6 minutes ago, mariushm said:

You would need new motherboards whenever new technology shows up. For example, when DDR5 becomes popular and cheaper to manufacture compared to DDR4, they'll have to make new processors which support those DDR5 sticks, and most likely there's gonna be extra pins/ contacts required which are not present in the current cpu sockets or not wired to anything, so new motherboard with new cpu sockets would have to be made. 

 

Same with USB 4 - the big plan is to merge usb 4 with thunderbolt, which means you have to somehow be able to route pci-e lanes or video from video card through the usb connector so that usb connector becomes more universal - older motherboards don't have those physical connections on the motherboard, so a new cpu would also have to be helped by a new motherboard

So you would still have to upgrade but not so often if I got this right. I heard DDR5 is coming this year if I am not mistaken...

Thank you for all these infos!

 

[JohanKjeldahl7]

4 minutes ago, 8tg said:

Exactly that

If they made some super dope long term future proof soc board, you would never have to buy a new motherboard until a physical standard changed.

It happened with super socket 7 in the. 90’s but kinda in other ways. There was too much longevity in one board, with intel/amd/cyrix/idt etc all making processors for it, and nobody making processors for a new socket for a while, everyone just kept their ss7 boards and it was sort of a standard, everyone had an ss7 board so if you wanted to sell your processor you had to make it for ss 7.

So motherboard sales tanked in return because since the companies making processors needed to sell them, and consumers would only buy super socket 7 processors, they never had to upgrade.

It took actual collaboration between multiple processor manufacturers to break into multiple sockets, and it’s why cyrix ended up getting super sued to death by intel, amd moved to Slot A and Intel went to Slot 1, IDT gave up and became part of IBM, etc  

I heard a little bit about this SS7 a little time back. I think it would be a super cool video idea from linus to make an old PC with SS7 and talk a little bit about what you just talked about. Thank you for all the infos! I love to read that.

[Drama Lama]

3 hours ago, JohanKjeldahl7 said:

So you would still have to upgrade but not so often if I got this right. I heard DDR5 is coming this year if I am not mistaken...

Thank you for all these infos!

 

Yes in every modern cpu the memory controller is integrated into the cpu ( wasn’t always like this. Motherboards used to have 2 chipsets: a „ Northbridge „ and a „ Southbrigde „ ) but you also need new motherboards because older boards don’t necessarily have the right tolerances for higher speed ram or PCIe

( an example would be x470 boards that theoretically are able to support PCIe 4.0 but not that stable )