For those of us that use to repair or replace PC components for a living, motherboard changes are elementary. For the rest of us however, perhaps the following article will shed some light on the matter.

Technology often marches asymmetrically. CPUs, graphics cards, and chipsets follow different development and shipping schedules. One example of this is Socket 939 Athlon 64 CPUs. When those shipped last year, many were installed into AGP motherboards using either VIA K8T800 or Nvidia Nforce3 chipsets. That meant users were limited to AGP graphics and Serial ATA 150-only—or more often, IDE hard drives. As newer graphics hardware emerged, some users wanted to upgrade their 3D hardware, which meant swapping in a new motherboard. [Read the rest]