SiS multiplatform motherboard

[Mulciber]

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMDM2

Now I understand why some of these companies have such a hard time maintaining profitability.

I wonder how many man-hours and how much money were wasted on this completely useless idea.

 

[oddfellow]

An interesting idea, very well exectuted, but you do have to ask, why? :?

 

[Guden Oden]

Since when was the mobo the major cost when building a new system?

 

[Killer-Kris]

I've been thinking about it for a little bit, and this may have some use after all. If the motherboard ends up containing only the IO ports, and expansion slots, then the CPU and ram come on another expansion card it would be possibly for motherboard manufacturers to drasticly reduce the amount of time, money, and inventory they have. Since one design could serve both Intel, AMD, and any other chip makers.

The only problem I see with that is it kind of undoes what PCI express just did for GPUs. But other than that it seems like a fine idea.

Since when was the mobo the major cost when building a new system?

It's a nuisance if nothing else. I know I don't particularly want to buy a new motherboard, ram, etc... just to upgrade my processor.

 

[Mulciber]

It's a nuisance if nothing else. I know I don't particularly want to buy a new motherboard, ram, etc... just to upgrade my processor.

but by buying the motherboard, you're already doing just that. theres no reason at all to think that 2 years after you buy this there wont have been more advances in motherboard technology or further socket changes made by intel and amd.

 

[Killer-Kris]

It's a nuisance if nothing else. I know I don't particularly want to buy a new motherboard, ram, etc... just to upgrade my processor.

but by buying the motherboard, you're already doing just that. theres no reason at all to think that 2 years after you buy this there wont have been more advances in motherboard technology or further socket changes made by intel and amd.

Discarding socket, and ram types what sort of motherboard improvements are there? Usually just the newest fangled IO ports. But if all my devices use just the IO ports on my current motherboard I don't need them (yet).

Yeah I understand needing a new motherboard for socket and ram changes. But that is why the idea of a CPU neutral board is so interesting. You buy a new board when you need the new/want motherboard features, not when the processor has new features or needs a new socket.

 

[Mulciber]

im sorry, ive pretty much resigned myself to the fact that every time i need a new motherboard, the sockets have changed. this motherboard isn't socket neutral, it just has 2 different sockets. in a year or two when AMD and intel decide to change sockets yet again, it wont make a difference if you have this board or not. if im going to spend hundreds to upgrade my computer, i dont want to do it with some cobbled together motherboard with antiquated features.

ive never once thought to myself "gee, i'd like to switch to intel, but its just not worth it because of that darned motherboard"

edit:
the features that have changed since my last motherboard upgrade.

2.5 years ago i had a abit nforce1 motherboard. pci and agp based. parrallel ata with raid0 and raid1. a 10/100mb integrated nic. 4 usb2 ports. and a soundstorm hardware audio solution.

i recently upgraded and now have a foxconn nforce4. pci-e, pci-e 16x, pci. serial ata2 and parrallel ata with raid0+1. 100/1000mb integrated nic. firewire. 8 usb2 ports. a hardware firewall. and some cheesy software audio.

the sockets AMD has used in this time span have changed not once, but twice!

 

[Killer-Kris]

im sorry, ive pretty much resigned myself to the fact that every time i need a new motherboard, the sockets have changed.

Yeah, I have too. But what if that didn't have to be the case...

this motherboard isn't socket neutral, it just has 2 different sockets. in a year or two when AMD and intel decide to change sockets yet again, it wont make a difference if you have this board or not.

Yeah, I'm aware that THIS particular board is not in fact socket neutral, but the idea could be applied using this tech. If both cpu and ram sockets were placed onto a board like the AMD portion was, you would then have a socket neutral board.

This would let you on the same motherboard choose between any combination of things, P4 w\DDR2, A64 w\ DDR, Via w\SDR, etc...

Then the motherboard manufacturers would then have only cover the market from high to low end once, versus the many times with the different AMD/Intel boards.

edit:
the features that have changed since my last motherboard upgrade.

2.5 years ago i had a abit nforce1 motherboard. pci and agp based. parrallel ata with raid0 and raid1. a 10/100mb integrated nic. 4 usb2 ports. and a soundstorm hardware audio solution.

i recently upgraded and now have a foxconn nforce4. pci-e, pci-e 16x, pci. serial ata2 and parrallel ata with raid0+1. 100/1000mb integrated nic. firewire. 8 usb2 ports. a hardware firewall. and some cheesy software audio.

So do you use, your gigabit nic, firewire, and the new raid modes? While the new motherboard technologies may very well be important to you. I on the other hand, would have little to no use for those in my system, at least at this point in time. And truthfuly it would involve giving up a better sound solution in favor of worse sound and a bunch of features I don't use.


I guess the point I'm trying to make is that, with some sort of CPU neutral motherboard, it gives consumers the option to choose when it's time to pay for the newest must have features, lets them upgrade CPU/Ram with out doing the whole system, and on top of that costs the board manufacturers less in R&D, and lets them have to have less inventory on hand and fewer SKUs. So all in all it is far from a worthless tech, it's all just a matter of whether or not it'll be accepted.

I could even see OEMs, like HP, Dell, etc... favoring this type of technology, since it would allow them to cater to demand for AMD/Intel with having fewer parts that they need to deal with and lower tech support cost.

 

[Frank]

Originally, the bus from an original IBM PC was an adaptation of an instrument rack. You could buy industrial PC's that consisted of a passive backplane that only consisted of slots, and plugin cards that contained everything else.

That seems like a neat idea, but you need a faster connection than that bus between the CPU and memory subsystem, and (nowadays) the integrated perhiperals need the southbridge to be on the backplane, splitting up two halves of the chipset. So, you need to buy two half motherboards, which are more expensive than one, and they aren't as future-proof as you would want with such a design.

 

[martrox]

Motherboards are cheap....why even bother?

 

[horvendile]

Originally, the bus from an original IBM PC was an adaptation of an instrument rack. You could buy industrial PC's that consisted of a passive backplane that only consisted of slots, and plugin cards that contained everything else.

I have seen such a beast. The entire computer was on an ISA card. Scary.

 

[_xxx_]

If they could do multiproc with 1 Intel and 1 AMD, it would be interesting.

What's the point of buying an extra card for another proc which will prolly cost as much as a new mobo?