How important are motherboards for gaming?

[Aegrus]

My question is pretty simple: is there a reason to buy a high quality motherboard for a pc intended strictly for gaming? If I try to max a game such as Crysis, Skyrim, or anything else high-spec on a terrible motherboard, what are the consequences?

An example of a terrible mobo is the Asus M4A785TD-V Evo

 

[jacktesterson]

Overclocking is really only thing.

Stock there will be little difference.

I avoid Nvidia chipsets at all costs on motherboards.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Are you talking about form factor? or just motherboards in general

 

[fffblackmage]

Stock there will be little difference.

If any.

I avoid Nvidia chipsets at all costs on motherboards.

No problems there. Nvidia stopped making chipsets a while back.

 

[imaheadcase]

chipsets are chipsets. The only thing to be concerned with mobo is what features you actually want for computer, like one might have more sata ports, ones for SLI/Crossfire, more room around CPU for certain cooler, more expansion slots, etc.

But its all cosmetic for the most part.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Depending on what era, I guess. The Gigabyte UD3 R or P 775 LGA boards owned all other boards running QUADS back in the day.. more boards were able to reach high stable overclocks on those boards than any I know of.

Then I think the material used for the trace routes use to play a role, how big i'll never know.

Thickness of board for heat dissipation also was a minor variable.

Today we see the 32nm chips from Intel making the best efficient chips which don't rely too much on the boards anymore... they seem to be out of the overclocking factor just like the Blck or FSB

 

[wirednuts]

most board (all?) seem to use solid caps nowadays too, so even if you compare the cheapest ones to the upper level ones, they perform about the same.

biggest differences seem to be in bios features. which can help with overclocking like already mentioned

 

[StrangerGuy]

My question is pretty simple: is there a reason to buy a high quality motherboard for a pc intended strictly for gaming? If I try to max a game such as Crysis, Skyrim, or anything else high-spec on a terrible motherboard, what are the consequences?

An example of a terrible mobo is the Asus M4A785TD-V Evo

Anything with Nvidia chipsets after NF4 is terrible regardless of perceived quality and price.

Mobos and RAM are easily the least important parts these days. All of them are most likely made in China by the lowest bidder even if it was a $300+ board. If you wanna pay $200 for an extra 100-200MHz OC and bling, more power to you. Just don't claim you are getting a great deal for the money.

 

[paperwastage]

Anything with Nvidia chipsets after NF4 is terrible regardless of perceived quality and price.

Mobos and RAM are easily the least important parts these days. All of them are most likely made in China by the lowest bidder even if it was a $300+ board. If you wanna pay $200 for an extra 100-200MHz OC and bling, more power to you. Just don't claim you are getting a great deal for the money.

mobos are still important. the amount of engineering/design that they put into the product does reflect the price (up to a certain price point)

I think $100-$300 mobos are roughly the same quality(ignoring the niche stuff like 4xSLI support) to allow you to overclock (enough cooling on MOSFET/power phases etc), or "good" design that you like (like SATA ports on the side to avoid an extra-long GPU)

<$100, you have to be careful not to kill anything(but of course, there are gems in that category)

 

[Zap]

My question is pretty simple: is there a reason to buy a high quality motherboard for a pc intended strictly for gaming? If I try to max a game such as Crysis, Skyrim, or anything else high-spec on a terrible motherboard, what are the consequences?

Let me ask you this. Will spending $250 on some basketball shoes with some famous pro player name on it make you a better basketball player than spending $100 on some basketball shoes of the same brand but without the name on it?

 

[Flat Mop]

It doesn't make much difference, in my gaming rig I have high end CPU and graphics but a cheapo Asus motherboard and this doesn't seem to have had a detrimental affect on gaming performance. But there are reasons for getting an expensive mobo, for instance if you wanted to add eight memory modules, lots of PCI slots, lots of SATA connectors or have Crossfire/SLI dual card graphics there would be benefits. But don't just buy something with a fancy BIOS and heatpipes on the northbridge just because you can.