yeah its pretty crazy, well odd i guess i should say Newegg.com - Enter the ATI Radeon CrossFire Ecosystem and leave the enemy behind theres a banner at the top for AMD chipsets, its weird AMD Motherboards, AMD Athlon Motherboard, Athlon 64 Motherboards, Socket 939 Motherboard at Newegg.com
Unimpressed...... subpar, the excitment was quickley destroyed major disapointment... and bad spelling lol Newegg.com - EPoX EP-AD580XR ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail doesn't even have dual RJ45's, seems to be the best option rate now, minus the ECS offering which is just odd... AMD you need to learn what people like, and this is not it, tell people to make better boards, and they have to be pretty, and the right price, LEARN THE MARKET CODE, and everything needs to be in the right places, the ATX power connecter is in the middle of the board, NOT COOL, thats weird, people come on. ok i'm done, for now
I'm not sure you understand a few concepts here: 1.)AMD makes CPU's, various RAM, and now with the ATi acquisition, chipsets and GPU's. 2.)AMD can only dictate certain things on a motherboard, namely the CPU socket and retention. They cannot dictate that a motherboard company implement certain chipset features or add others. 3.)Epox is not ECS, and will do whatever they damn well please. AMD's recommendations for motherboard layouts include the power connector in the middle of the motherboard. How can AMD, or Intel, dictate a motherboard layout for their CPU when it may not work for all chipsets designed for that CPU? It might work for an i975X, but would kill an SiS 648. 4.)Enthusiast boards make up a small part of the entire motherboard business. Epox, is going to look at what most of it's customers want as a whole. A review or two isn't going to make them budge, but, if say, HP orders 100,000 motherboards and doesn't like something, Epox is probably going to make a change so long as it's not making an issue for other parts. This isn't the only example, of course, but before you jump on Epox, realize that they may do certain things for very good reasons. Who are you more likely to take advice from: someone who designed some electronic part or a potential buyer of one item who doesn't like a few minor layout points. 5.)Also consider that what I may like in a motherboard layout, someone else may simply despise. I agree that Epox should change the placement of the ATX connector, but I also understand the electrical reasons for it. I don't care about dual NICs. I don't run my box as a router...so why would I want the second NIC? Other people may really want that. 6.)Marketing. More features are used as a selling point. Dual NICs might be fine if the motherboard's a server or a router, but in an age with switches, it seems silly to want multiple NICs.
Ok i'm not sure you understand a few thing here. First off 1-4 are all pretty obvious, but i'm sure AMD has a hand in what the boards layout is, as i'm sure Nvidia does as most of their boards look very similar. Secondly i am comparing the ATI configured boards to the Nvidia boards, as they the manufacturers who make their boards do very well and they have real nice features and are laid out very nicely. Also yes its obvious that the enthusiast boards are a small portion of the market, hence you make the best sweetest board you can with the most features you can cram on it, why, to hit the broadest available market and to appeal to the most people you can. If there is a small percentage of people buying my board them i'm sure as hell going to make it so a lot of people like it. Mainboards have a hand it which graphic chip is bought, if the board i'm going to buy doesn't have everything i want on it, or looks funny i'm going to go with the other one because it has what most want and looks a lot better as i'm sure most feel, and i know a few beside me who do. Boards with Nvidia's chipset seems to be selling really well, so why not make boards that are the exact same as their boards or as similar as possible. On the dual lan, why not?? thats my question and in the day of switches, have you looked at the price of a switch, in the hundreds thats a lot, and routers with over five ports are about the same. I have in fact in a couple occasion been the savior because of the dual lan machines i have. Lastly, well i don't think this concerns AMD, but in the Nvidia chipset as i'm sure you know supports teaming, which also a nice feature and does work and makes a difference. Also, certain things are marketable and certain things should be marketed a certain way. There is a code to the way people buy things, believe it or not you do learn things in college. If your not on to code with what our selling people aren't really going to like it. People expect certain things, why do you think that most rich people drive around in a Mercedes rather than a Cadillac??? the price, Cadillac's are to cheap for their market, but to expensive for regular people to buy. The same applies here, if you don' t have the right features people are going to be turned off Lastly, yeah i figured by saying something here i would change the whole market and they would probably configure there boards differently, and why would i think two separate companies are the same... obviously ECS and Epox are not the same company, i was just saying ECS had comparable layouts to what is popular but the board looked funny
The 680i boards are all using the nVidia reference design, but are not required to. Asus did they're own thing with the Striker Extreme, but so far, everyone else has opted to use the reference design. The current chipsets from AMD (formerly of ATi) haven't been altered save the name going to AMD's credit. I think companies look at what's included in a chipset, look at what market the motherboard is going to, and then add accordingly. For networking, again, there's a number of switches under $100, many 16 port, and a few 24-port ones. Plus, if you're hosting LAN parties much at all, I'd think you'd have a switch in place. I have looked at switches, and they've come down in price, thanks to demand and companies turning them out to meet said demand.
Newegg.com - DFI LANPARTY UT ICFX3200-T2R/G ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail Yeah, even though its for an Intel processor, this is what i'm talking about.
