If CPU is the brain of a computer, chipset is the soul of it. Chipset can be categorized into North bridge and South bridge, they need to work together. North bridge is mainly responsible for the coordinating jobs between CPU and system bus. The South bridge deals with the I/O routines, IRQ and DMA management. There are 3 main chipset manufacturers in the world: Intel, VIA and SIS. Another new comer, nVidia, a traditional display card manufacturer started to produce their own chipsets not long ago. The latest trend is the integrated chipset, it means add-on cards are no longer needed such as modem, sound or audio cards because the all-in-one chipset can do them all. The good thing is no more hardware conflict, but the bad thing is their overall performance is always considered to be inferior to that of add-on cards. The general poor performance of integrated display card is an obvious example. My latest motherboard's chipset is called Intel 82845PE MCH / 82801DB ICH4, or can be named as i845 in short. So how does it bother with you? All system builders should be fully aware of the development of chipsets. Because the chipset model confines what kind of hard disk format such as ATA66, 100, 133, and what kind of ram module your system supports. For those overclocking lovers, chipset is of utmost importance because it also confines the system what highest frequency / clock rate can be used.

Useful hints:
1. Stick to buying computers with Intel chipset, experience tells me much more stable and less heat comparing with AMD platforms.
2. For AMD users, VIA is the "only" choice but remember update the 4-in-1 driver frequently. AMD machine can be very fast but heat is a big problem.
3. Visit both Intel and VIA websites regularly to check if there are any new chipset utility drivers. Some might experience OS can not recognize the motherboard again after reinstalling Windows, go get the respective chipset driver and install it.