Graphics and Storage
Photograph: Charlie NucciMost of the motherboards we tested offer dual graphics capability, a gaming-focused feature that lets you run two graphics cards in tandem for maximum speed. Our tests have shown that this approach can seriously boost gaming performance. Both ATI and nVidia offer graphics cards that support dual graphics. Two motherboard chip sets, ATI's own Radeon Xpress 200 and Intel's 975X Express, support ATI's CrossFire technology. nVidia's SLI technology necessitates using one of nVidia's nForce4 SLI chip sets.
All of the dual-graphics chip sets support a pair of PCI Express x16 slots, but nVidia's nForce4 SLI X16 was the first to dedicate a full 16 PCI Express lanes to each slot, increasing the bandwidth available to each card. Both of our Best Buys employ this chip set; however, whether the additional bandwidth will improve performance with today's graphics boards and games is debatable.
Fortunately, even less-expensive boards like the $105 Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI have dual-graphics-card support. Just be aware that the two PCI Express x16 slots can limit your other expansion options. The trade-off is worthwhile if you want the option of running a pair of graphics cards, but Asus's P5N32-SLI Deluxe, for instance, leaves little space for PCI add-in cards as a result: The board houses only one PCI Express x1 slot and two standard PCI slots along with the two x16 slots.
Whichever motherboard you choose, storage connections are unlikely to be a problem, even if you're building a system for space-grabbing tasks like editing video or storing music and movies. Every motherboard that we looked at supplies enough parallel ATA and Serial ATA (SATA) connectors to attach more hard drives and optical drives than the average system needs; even basic motherboards like the Asus A8R-MVP provide four SATA ports and two parallel ATA channels. This should be plenty unless you're planning to use a sophisticated three- or four-drive RAID setup on your machine.
Every motherboard we saw supports RAID 0 (which combines two or more hard drives for speed), RAID 1 (where two drives mirror data so it's preserved if one drive fails), and RAID 0+1 (a composite of both approaches that requires twice as many disks). Most also support RAID 5, which uses three or more drives to blend speed and reliability. For users with vast storage needs, the Foxconn 955X7AA board includes three separate RAID controllers, good for attaching scads of 500GB drives.
But not all of the boards support the latest SATA standard, with its maximum transfer rate of 300 MBps; the Intel and DFI models support the older SATA-150 standard. That's not a critical factor, however, because no hard drive today (whether it supports SATA-300 or not) can max out the SATA-150 interface's bandwidth. So think of motherboards that provide SATA-300 connectors as offering a hedge against obsolescence. Two of the Asus boards and both ECS motherboards (the latter missed our chart) have an eSATA port, a new type of connector that lets you add an external SATA drive more easily. With a port multiplier, this single port can accommodate up to five drives.
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