Integrated peripherals
Block diagram of a modern motherboard, which supports many on-board peripheral functions as well as several expansion slots.
With the steadily declining costs and size of
integrated circuits, it is now possible to include support for many
peripherals on the motherboard. By combining many functions on one
PCB, the physical size and total cost of the system may be reduced; highly-integrated motherboards are thus especially popular in
small form factor and budget computers.
For example, the ECS RS485M-M,
[6] a typical modern budget motherboard for computers based on
AMD processors, has on-board support for a very large range of peripherals:
disk controllers for a
floppy disk drive, up to 2
PATA drives, and up to 6
SATA drives (including
RAID 0/1 support)
integrated ATI Radeon graphics controller supporting 2D and 3D graphics, with
VGA and
TV output
integrated sound card supporting 8-channel (7.1) audio and
S/PDIF output
fast Ethernet network controller for 10/100
Mbit networking
USB 2.0 controller supporting up to 12 USB ports
IrDA controller for infrared data communication (e.g. with an IrDA enabled Cellular Phone or Printer)
temperature, voltage, and fan-speed sensors that allow software to monitor the health of computer components
Expansion cards to support all of these functions would have cost hundreds of dollars even a decade ago, however as of April 2007
[update] such highly-integrated motherboards are available for as little as $30 in the USA.
[
edit] Peripheral card slots
A typical motherboard of 2007 will have a different number of connections depending on its standard. A standard ATX motherboard will typically have 1x PCI-E 16x connection for a graphics card, 2x PCI slots for various expansion cards and 1x PCI-E 1x which will eventually supersede PCI.
A standard Super ATX motherboard will have 1x PCI-E 16x connection for a graphics card. It will also have a varying number of PCI and PCI-E 1x slots. It can sometimes also have a PCI-E 4x slot. This varies between brands and models.
Some motherboards have 2x PCI-E 16x slots to allow more than 2 monitors without special hardware or to allow use of a special graphics technology called SLI (for Nvidia) and Crossfire (for ATI). These allow 2 graphics cards to be linked together to allow better performance in intensive graphical computing tasks such as gaming and video editing.
As of 2007
[update], virtually all motherboards come with at least 4x USB ports on the rear with at least 2 connections on the board internally for wiring additional front ports that are built into the computers case. Ethernet is also included now. This is a standard networking cable for connecting the computer to a network or a modem. A sound chip is always included on the motherboard to allow sound to be output without the need for any extra components. This allows computers to be far more multimedia based than before. Cheaper machines now often have their graphics chip built into the motherboard rather than a separate card.
MOTHERBOARD
