A chipset is basically a group of ICs or several chips designed to work together. Since, the chipset con¬trols communication amongst the processor and ex¬ternal devices, it plays a crucial role in determining the system's performance. We have two types of chipsets on the motherboard: Northbridge and Southbridge. The Northbridge links the CPU to highspeed devices, especially main memory and graphics controller while the Southbridge connects it to low¬speed peripheral buses such as PCl. The chipset limits the CPU types and speeds that the board can take, the type of RAM you can install, and also limits the ex¬tras such as integrated graphics, sound and USB 2.0 ports that can be included on the board.

While opting for an entry level motherboard it's al¬ways advisable to go for the one with in-built graph¬ics chipset, otherwise you might have to bear the additional cost of a graphics card. Chipset also allows you to configure RAID on your motherboard, but that's common across only high-end motherboards.

It you are planning for a high-end board and will insert your own gaming cards, then choose a board having the latest NVIDIA, Intel or ATI chipsets. This will improve the overall performance. Intel P35 and ATI 790FX are new chipsets that support Quad Core processors and are quite popular these days.