With the steadily declining costs and size of integrated circuits, it is now possible to include support for many peripherals on the motherboard. By combining many functions on one PCB, the physical size and total cost of the system may be reduced; highly-integrated motherboards are thus especially popular in small form factor and budget computers.
For example, the ECS RS485M-M, a typical modern budget motherboard for computers based on AMD processors, has on-board support for a very large range of peripherals:
1.disk controllers for a floppy disk drive, up to 2 IDE/PATA drives, and up to 4 SATA drives (including RAID 0/1 support)
2.integrated ATI Radeon graphics controller supporting 2D and 3D graphics, with VGA and TV output
3.integrated sound card supporting 6-channel audio and SPDIF output
4.fast Ethernet network controller for 10/100 Mbps networking
5.USB 2.0 controller supporting up to 8 USB ports
6.IrDA controller for infrared communications (e.g. with a handheld remote control)
7.temperature, voltage, and fan-speed sensors that allow software to monitor the health of computer components
Expansion cards to support all of these functions would have cost hundreds of dollars even a decade ago, however as of April 2007 such highly-integrated motherboards are available for as little as $30 in the USA.
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