Bit of a newbie question on motherboards. You should be able to help

I have been looking at motherboards and found that they all have a chipset. Now what exacty is a chipset. Am I right in saying the nvidia make chipsets but dont make motherboards. Whats the diff between motherboards and chipsets and how do the two relate to each other?

Thanks

Chipset is basically the architecture the manufacturer uses to build the piece of hardware. Nvidia doesn't build their own because they try to work on their future projects to stay ahead of ati. They have evga, bfg, ect build their vid cards and mobos for them but basically the chipset can be described as what the piece of hardware is built on. Go here it explains it better than I can:

http://www.pantherproducts.co.uk/Articles/Motherboard/chipset.shtml

I have been looking at motherboards and found that they all have a chipset. Now what exacty is a chipset. Am I right in saying the nvidia make chipsets but dont make motherboards. Whats the diff between motherboards and chipsets and how do the two relate to each other?

Thanks

qwerty_singh

Sometimes when speaking of chipset on motherboards they actually reffer to the (1)NorthBrige/SouthBrige, and sometimes people mean the whole (2)motherboard.

But if someone ask you what chipset you have they mean if it's P35/X38/750 motherboard, thats basicly the same as (1) as the north/southbrige differs on diffrent types of motherboards.