How We Evaluate Features
Most boards available today comes with all sorts of features, some of them useful, but most 'feels' like gimmicks or not fully prepared and thought of. While LED lights and UV panels does look 'cool', they don't have any practical use. Gamers and general users alike will gladly trade the 'cool' factor for a product that delivers stability, performance and useful features. And of course, while having lots of features does add value to a product, if that additional feature interfere with other components or complicates troubleshooting, that feature will more likely be considered a nuisance.Here are several things we will address when we're evaluating the features of any motherboard or graphics card.
- Cooling: northbridge, southbridge, memory, other components, active or passive cooling, thermal tape / paste usage, fan headers
- Hardware monitoring: core, cpu and ambient temperature, core and rails (3.3, 5, 12 volt) voltage, S.M.A.R.T
- Expansion: graphics card (onboard), sound card (onboard), SATA, RAID for both IDE, SATA and SCSI, USB, Firewire, Ethernet, expansion slots for add-on cards, connectors using space for add-on cards, cable connectors near / around add-on slots, DIMM memory slots, SPDIF in/out (optical and coaxial), front-panel extension or 3.5' slot, video-in/out, TV / Radio tuner, MPEG hardware encoder / hardware assisted encoder, dual or more outputs
- Troubleshooting: clear CMOS jumper, diagnostic tools, built-in flash, BIOS recovery, BIOS defaults
- Manual override: multiplier selection, FSB and memory speed selection, chipset and interface (AGP / PCI / PCI-E) features, core, memory, i / o voltage selection
- Ergonomics: those listed in expansions should not interfere / obstruct other functions (troubleshooting / manual override / airflow considerations) or add-ons (full length add-ons or dual-slot graphics card).
- Other: additional hardware: storage add-on or expansion driver disk for first time Windows installation, digital card readers, smart card readers, wireless networking, rounded / streamlined cables, biometric sensors, security key etc.
How We Evaluate Documentation
Needless to say, a good product with poor documentation will never be a great product. Thankfully many manufacturers still provide print documentation with their product. An electronic document is nice, but they won't help you much when you only have one PC and that PC is the one you're troubleshooting. A separate guide on RAID is good, since manufacturers can omit it from non-RAID equipped boards and possible make the board a little cheaper in the process. While a quick setup guide is also very nice, some manufacturers actually complicates thing by making them feel like a full blown manual. A quick setup guide should be short, concise, preferable with lots of clear pictures and contain step by step procedure or a graphical flowchart of the troubleshooting process. If there are hidden settings or overclocking features integrated with the product, the manual must provide a disclaimer and a thorough explanation of the settings and features, with a guide to troubleshoot should a problem arise.Here are several areas we feel must be covered by the printed documentation of any motherboard or graphics card.
- Technical specification
- Motherboard or graphics card layout
- Memory installation and slots configuration
- Hardware installation guide (processor, memory, add-on, storage (IDE, SATA and SCSI), USB, Firewire, front panel, power connectors, installing motherboard in a case). For graphics card, graphics card installation and relevant connections (power, audio etc).
- BIOS configuration guide
- Software and driver installation guide
- RAID configuration guide (if equipped with RAID IDE, SATA or SCSI capabilities)
- 3D configuration guide - OpenGL / Direct3D.
- Glossary
Additional Notes for Subjective Evaluation
During testing and evaluation, we will find things from a product that we like or dislike. These things may not be covered by performance testing or features evaluation, but nonetheless we think they will interest users and our readers. Below are examples of additional subjective evaluation we might make when evaluating a product or platform.- Compatibility problems with add-on cards, memory
- Stability issues
- Heat issues
- Using higher FSB than normal
- Using higher clock than normal (as officially specified by chip maker for that series)
- Beta BIOSes and drivers
- Audio quality
- Display / image quality
- Noise from fans, or lack of
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