Talking Heads: Motherboard Manager Edition, Q4'10, Part 2

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pandemonium_ctp

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Excellent read. I love seeing you guys get real world answers from companies willing to participate. It really shows where the industry is heading.

This means having a small budget can’t stop you from building a reasonably heavy-duty computer. If you don’t believe us, look at our latest $400 System Builder Marathon configuration.
Absolutely agree. This is basically where I've been placing my builds for the last 10 years; at the bottom of the price curve where performance hits the sweet spot for price. I alone typify that logic.

The industry has always been on a smaller, faster, cheaper trend, and that's never going to change. Netbooks are here to stay, until something smaller, faster, and cheaper replaces them.
Smartphones/PDA? They've existed for a long time now. The problem is the technology wasn't around to give them the power they needed to do everything a Netbook can do. That is rapidly changing. I hate to say it, but I disagree with Netbooks being a long-term investment. The consumer now is driven by convenience. If my smartphone can be my multimedia outlet, document editor, day planner, browser, camera, accessory portal (ear pieces/headsets, printers, scanners, etc...) and telephone, they why would I want to lug around seperate devices for each of those?

If you can play 720p and 480p with decent bit-rates for $100 to $200 less, why not? This type of buying decision is naturally going to be a short term phenomenon.
Very short-term. At the way things are going, that will be one to two years worth of earnings at the most. Hardly worth the R&D IMHO.

I think the most valuable feature for future motherboards is saving power and enhanced performance.
This is the bottom line for everything, basically. This motto can not falter.

The fact that hybrids migrate graphic functionality to the processor might not actually change that much. As one person noted, the construction of the motherboard hasn’t gotten any simpler. Quite the opposite, in fact. We are now looking at motherboards that are more complex than ever before.
Complexity is definitely the direction the industry has taken. However, I would think if a manufacturer wanted to baseline a board with IGPs, they would do so in terms of finding a way to allow additional discrete GPU and/or CPU installments for those that tinker. I know this has been tried in the past, but I'm not talking about simple onboard graphics processors.

The baseline board would be for the general consumer and could handle day-to-day tasks found in every household. While additional GPU and CPU configurations that would work in conjuction with the onboard processors appeals to the specializing category. We just need a manufacturer to take that step to allow them to co-exist in the same environment and provide that extra benefit of accessorizing.
 

dennisburke

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The Future Of Motherboads And Their Makers

The P55 is a great middle of the road platform, and if one graphics card (even two) is enough to wet your whistle, you could'nt ask for more.

I think brand loyalty comes about by great customer support and innovation, and it doesn't hurt to have a well used and supportive attached forum.

I've hide my eggs with Intel, WD, Corsair, ASUS, and EVGA for many years now, and they are safe.
 
I agree with everything the first poster said, except for one STRONG disagreement; that he is the only one who typifies that logic. "How low can you go" is a recurring theme in every build I do, especially for myself. If I want more future resistance, I'll go a step or three above that, but the base thinking still tends to be at the bottom in terms of cost (including power usage).
In an economy where it is more important that things last, what I want to see is a focus on durability. Gigabyte advertises this very well, but I find that ASRock has many of the same elements (e.g. all-solid, Japanese caps, ferrite chokes) and costs a lot less.
 

Th-z

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I am surprised MB makers didn't talk about speeding up the boot process, or UEFI, if it can speed up the boot time. I think really fast boot up is what everybody really wants. Now we can get SSD to speed up the loading for the OS part, but the very first thing when you turn on the computer, you still have to wait couple seconds for the slow BIOS to finish its tests, etc. That's probably the one thing that hasn't improved a lot when comparing to the speed improvement in other components.
 

WarraWarra

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Wow extremely confusing heading for this article.
Thought it is some software that does what with motherboards ?
And talking heads music band has got what to do with this ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_Heads

If not for the weird article name the rest is very nice.

Good to see Toms getting serious about hardware and reality from a users point of view.

5*
 

Stardude82

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I don't know if competition in motherboards has decreased that much.. Zotac and EVGA are new. It's not like the CPU market which went from 4 competitors to 2.
 
Hm might want to look at that ULV comment in reference to Intel. With such small and highly integrated parts you can't just use a processors wattage requirements but instead use the platforms requirements. In this case I believe Via's Nano processor wins.
 

chumly

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I am impatiently waiting for UEFI as well. I think it would be amazing to have a 4TB single hard drive. BIOS is ancient, it needs an update. I also don't believe that the competition in the market of GPUs is reflected at all in the Motherboard market, especially on the AMD side. Nforce boards are terrible in both price and features. It seriously affects my decision on which new GPU to purchase.
 

zodiacfml

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It is important to remember that Atom's success is due to low pricing, which cannot be understated

I don't know with people bashing the Atom, due to its poor performance or efficiency. It is a chip with a very small die area.
 

wayneepalmer

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I still celebrate the death of ABIT - they caused me so much trouble, money, and pain.

Jtt283 - ASROCK is a subset / knock off of ASUS - think of it as the ASUS version of Saturn - quirky and a bit bizarre (hey, I got a 4core dual SATA2 REV 2 running on one of my systems), but reliable and relatively inexpensive.
 

BulkZerker

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This article was very refreshing and I'm ooking forwards to the future from IGPonCPU for the future. Saving power, and they might even make decent entry level gaming possible for REAL cheap. Give it a year or two and it'll be just as powerful as what you get on a 360 / PS3 lol




[citation][nom]dennisburke[/nom].I've hide my eggs with Intel, WD, Corsair, ASUS, and EVGA for many years now, and they are safe.[/citation]

That is, till EVGA releases another bad batch of Motherboards/Vid Cards (Thanks to Nvidia's faulters, still an issue in small instances and its debatable on each board which is to blame)

Evga's stance is the same as Microsoft's xbox, offer a product that may fail, and if they do, honor the warranty without any sort of argument.

Out of all my Intel using buddies that had Evga parts (well over 100) 20 of them had to return boards -multiple- times. That's not an acceptable return rate and a reason that I won't use another EVGA board for builds in the future. (Letalone the turd cooler they put on my Geforce 6800 so many years ago.)

Asus had those Crosshair 4 boards that were faulty also, Hell Gigabyte had some boards that had no paste on the northbridge!

Don't just assume becuase it's a brand Y it'll last forever. Buy what's the best for the budget.
 

wayneepalmer

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One of the things I have discovered is if you are looking for longevity, even if you aren't a overclocking commando (using liquid nitrogen to try and keep your cpu from hitting critical mass at 8 ghz) using a top--end overclocking motherboard is a really good way to insure a long life for your pc.
More robust components, greater voltage control capacity causing greater power stability, and - most importantly - the more extravagant cooling provided for on far more areas of the board usually means that the board is just plain going to last longer than cheaper alternatives.

You get what you pay for. You buy strong components parts, you insure stable power and sufficient cooling and your pc lasts until Windows obsoletes it out of existence.

One more thing the PC manufacturing world needs to deal with: you guys need to come up with MUCH better ways of keeping dust out of the box (ones that don't impede airflow). Even cleaning inside the box regularly is not an optimal solution as things like taking the unit apart to get at the back of the motherboard risks damaging it.
 

josejones

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I'm old school I guess. I have no intention of ever overclocking (because I want my system to last) or unlocking CPU cores. I don't even game on my PC beyond poker (I use to play the Halo free demo) - that's what my separate gaming console is for. I use onboard video & it works just fine. So, I don't want to spend money on MoBo parts/features I'll never use like cross-fire/SLI & more - I'll never buy 2 GPU's.

My PC is for my small business & personal use. I'm more concerned with smart Power consumption management (don't want skyrocketing energy bills), upgradeability to next-generation technology and long lifespan while keeping costs down.

Everything seems to be all about gaming - my needs are omitted or ignored by PC PR/Adverts and websites. I'd like to see more products that focus on my needs - not everybody is a PC gamer. What PC website community focuses on my needs?
 

wayneepalmer

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Good luck on that Jose.

My comment on "dust in the box" is one of those sorts of issues...and about using some "over-clocker's" components to get a long life.

Unfortunately, no one makes money by playing up selling a pc that will last 5 or more years and few people make parts for that market.

Microsoft tends to actively discourage that sort of thinking by pushing hardware manufacturers to change the plug-in / data buss options for parts every couple of years to optimize for Windows updates - these eventually shut down or hinder the operation of older motherboard hardware formats (early AGP, USB 1.0, older CPU slots, isa card slots, etc) usually by messing with either the Windows boot or voltage control.

Figure your pc designed for a version of Windows will last more or less thru one Windows redesign - a Win 95 pc lasted until Win 2000 (sort of) , Win 98 to XP, a Win 2000 system will last to Vista, XP systems are being killed off right now by Win 7, etc.

I'm not sure how that will work with Vista / Win 7 as Windows 7 is actually Vista SP2 and is using less resources but you get the idea.

In addition, buying an off-the-shelf desktop pc or cheap laptop is pretty much a prescription to getting a pc that - due to system manufacturers using cheap parts on their lower-end systems - will crap out on you a few months after the base warranty expires...if you are lucky

I don't game much either, but I do use my systems as home media centers (why by a dvd player when you can just plug in a pc to your tv AND be able to surf the net from your comfy chair or laying in bed) and I do CAD work for both school and my job - so a little bit of extra oomph in the gpu beyond the onboard graphics is needed on at least one pc.

Your safest bet is in doing a LOT of research...this means reading thru hundreds of customer comments on sites like NEWEGG and TOMS about specific components AND by trying to follow the help forums. NEVER buy anything that has less than a hundred comments good and bad.

If all you see is people asking either novice "I can't read the instructions" type of questions (guilty as charged your honor!) or about hot-rodding their pc and few actual faulty part issues, you can bet that part or pc is a decent option that will last you a while.

Jose - I'd guess I'd say if you are looking for a normal-user community, I'd just surf the help forums.
 

josejones

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Thanks wayne. I figured as much - I've been thinking it for a long time; waiting for someone else to say it so, I finally said it. I'd like to see a section on this website for cheap, tight, penny pinchers like myself. I suppose they do, sort of, ya just have to know what to look for as it's just not always clear. I just wish it was more obvious; especially with the recession/economy the way it is.
 
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"It is important to remember that Atom's success is due to low pricing, which cannot be understated."

So it's not important at all? Or do you mean cannot be overstated?
 

pyite

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The most helpful motherboard innovation would be for Asus to let users replace their "splashtop" boot environment with a user-loadable Linux kernel & initrd.

For example - the ability to do an iSCSI boot this way would be HUGE.
 

akula2

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I had enough of Windows 7 (am using 22 Workstations) but why no more frequent talk about ATI/nVidia future support on Linux? Why doesn't Tom focus? I always loathed nVidia's driver model on Linux compared to ATI. It would be great if these guys talk more about Linux now because Multi platform (Apple/Linux/Windows) business users (plus kernel hackers) like me would benefit a lot.
 
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