How does the motherboard effect the computers performance?

Answer 1

I'm gonna try to be simplistic here..

The CPU processes data, so the faster the processor the more data it can process in a certain period of time, this is good if you are going to be doing processor intesive tasks, such as rendering a 3D animation, compiling source code, handling and editing very large images.

But you must remember the CPU only processes information, so, if all you do in your computer is use a word processor, surf the web, listen to music and simple tasks like these, you don't need the latest most expensive processor available.

The amount RAM is usually the thing that makes most computers seem slow, even though the processor is fairly good.

Whenever you open a program, this program needs to load various things that it needs to work into the RAM. Whenever the RAM is full or almost full, the operating system uses "Virtual Memory" which is like RAM but on your hard disk. Using virtual memory causes you computer to seem very slow because the speed to write/read from you hard disk is much slower then the speed to write/read from RAM directly.

So basically the more RAM you have, less likely it is for your operating system to use Virtual Memory (hard disk temp data).

RAM is useful if you are multitasking, and not necesarilly tasks which are processor intensive. For example, say you like to surf the web (firefox), listen to music (iTunes), have a word proceessor open (MS Word), and have an image habndling program open (Adobe Photoshop).

None of these programs are VERY processor intensive, but they do require quite some amount of RAM to run.

So lets see:

windows XP = 100MB

firefox = 30MB

iTunes = 40MB

Word = 30MB

Photoshop = 50MB

This makes a total of 250MB

If your computer has 256MB of RAM, at this stage it will become very slow because it has to use virtual memory to keep up with all your open programs.

If you had 512MB, your computer would run smoothly.

Windows Vista, is VERY RAM consuming, so it is recommended at least 1 or 2GB of RAM for it tu run well.

Motherboard,

Usually this is not a big deal, but the faster the motherboards bus is, the faster it can transfer data from the hard disk to RAM or processor.

Something else that affects speed on your PC is the RPM on your hard disk.

RPM = Revolutions per minute.

Nowadays, the usual are 5400RPM or 7200RPM

Laptops usually have hard drisk of 5400RPM

and Desktops usually have 7200RPM

This is the amount of times the disk can rotate in a minute,

the faster it can rotate, the faster you can read/write data to it.

Having a 5400RPM hard disk is noticeably slower then having a 7200RPM.

Answer 2

The two main things to look for when you're looking to buy a computer when it comes to speed is processor speed and motherboard speed. So don't JUST pay attention to the motherboard but a nice speed motherboard can greatly increase the speed of a computer.

Answer 3

the motherboard tells the fatherBoard to help the sonBoard do his homework. This substantially boosts the computers performance. But after the fall of Soviet Union, this is just a namesake process only to renew the memories of the lost zombie season.