Industry Update - Q2-2005: Chipset wars, AMD's growing market share and more...
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 13, 2005 4:34 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Motherboards
For the most part, motherboards are pretty stagnant these days. The number of individual motherboard manufacturers is dwindling, and many motherboard makers are simply motherboard designers who get their boards manufactured by Foxconn or ECS. Sometimes, you'd be surprised if you knew where your motherboard really came from.Of course, the most interesting motherboards are all Socket-939 and LGA-775 based now; the transition from Socket-754 and Socket-478 is pretty much complete, with the former still being used for entry-level AMD motherboards.
The trend these days is to put as many PCIe x16 slots on your motherboard as possible, regardless of whether or not you can use them for SLI or CrossFire configurations. So we've seen motherboards based on Intel, SiS and VIA chipsets with two PCIe x16 connectors, yet with no real use for the dual slots for now - other than added marketing potential.
As we mentioned in our Computex coverage, the move to the BTX form factor is going extremely slowly. Most manufacturers are expecting to ship less than 10% of their products in a BTX form factor, with the large majority of them forecasting numbers closer to 3%. By the end of 2006, demand is expected to rise a bit, but the most aggressive numbers that we've seen are 30% - 35% (including OEM shipments). The majority of manufacturers are saying that only 15% of their shipments will be BTX motherboards by the end of 2006. The end result is that the BTX transition won't really take place in any appreciable numbers until 2007 or 2008, with BTX being the de-facto standard by 2009.
Memory
Much like the CPU and motherboard markets, the memory market appears to be at a standstill, thanks to it also being in a transitional period. The transition from DDR1 to DDR2 is taking much longer than expected for two reasons: the increased longevity of DDR1 and the slowing CPU market.Being able to run at much higher frequencies than DDR1 is the major advantage that DDR2 offers. But since Intel's FSB is still stuck at 800MHz for the vast majority of processors, Intel platforms don't really need more than a dual channel DDR400 interface, much less DDR2-667. AMD won't transition to DDR2 until Q2 2006, so there won't be any demand from the other side of the fence either until then. With DDR2 not making much sense on Intel platforms and not used on AMD platforms, there's no surprise that the transition to DDR2 is taking a long time.
In fact, it sounds like one of the biggest pushes to DDR2 will be mobile, with Intel's Sonoma platform for Centrino. By the second half of this year, most manufacturers will be ready to transition to DDR2 mobile solutions.
Because of the slow DDR2 adoption, memory and motherboard manufacturers are thinking that it will be one more chipset generation before we see a real shift in memory technology.
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snedzad - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Not quite, #23. Pro edition of K8T800 chipset supports 939 sck., and non pro doesn't (intended for sck 754).Here is the evidence:
http://www.asustek.de/products/mb/mbindex.htm
Ciao
patrick0 - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
I don't care about on-die Graphics, prefer if they just add some PCIe lanes on-die (at least 17).I/O controller on-die is a great idea.
overclockingoodness - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
#15: I think you are wrong. The K8T800 Pro is for K8 Socket 754, so it won't support DC.Windaria - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
You know... I still can not understand why anyone would really like the BTX format. From everything I have read, it seems as if it is specifically designed for air to be blown in the back and out the front.The problem is that, while that sounds great, it appears to compeletely fail to take into consideration the environment that a PC is in. Every time I have ever had fans on a computer suck in the back and blow out the front... they get clogged with dust in no time because the rear of the computer tends to attract more dust. As a result I always have to switch them around.
nserra - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Uli is profitable because they have very cheap to manufacture single chip designs, and they do a lot of chipsets for USB2 external HD, …..I am waiting for Uli come out with their SLI chipset with REAL AGP that can be a good buy, even without the SLI. I didn’t buy right now one of the 3 ASROCK ULi based boards just because of that.
I think that Uli, sis, via aren’t bad, the problem is the “effort” that mobo makers have with them. If they could do the same they do with intel chipsets…. I won’t even talk about the quality of components they use on those chipset companies…..
Nayr - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Actually #15, the K8T800Pro will support Dual-Core CPU's. VIA is only having a problem with the K8T890 Chipset and DC CPU's. It was on the front page a while ago.All in all, a good read and an interesting view on what's to come down the pipe line.
coldpower27 - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
You can probably take this article regarding the marketshare figures for AMD chipsets with a grain of salt, with the anonymity of these figures.Yes AMD was/is, a leader of the US retail desktop sales, however current retail US desktop marketshare figures for H1 2005 are not unknown.
If they asked, motherboard manufacturer's primarily interested in retail sales, than these figures would be inline with the gains in the US retail desktop market.
Though the OEM would be a different story, Dell would probably get most of it's mobos from Intel itself.
Sunbird - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
mmm, new movie,Chipset Wars, set on a island far far away...
Uli: "Sis and Via, I'm am profitable, come over, and we could rule the motherboards together!"
ceefka - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
The shift with Taiwan mobomnfs is of course very nice for AMD, but doesn't Intel also make its own motherboards? And lots of them while we speak? How does that add in the total of motherboard making/selling?Anyway, you cannot expect the whole industry to go to sleep when so much speaks in favour of the Opteron and A64 especially since they are both coming in dual core also. AMD's growth is well deserverd.
The Sempron going 64-bit was expected and needed. This will give room for:
1. Hardware developpers to come up with the missing 64-bit drivers.
2. Software devoloppers to release some more 64-bit applications.
3. MS to eventually drop 32-bit support in favour of a full 64-bit (only) version.
The less manufacturers hanging on to 32-bit apps the faster the transition to 64-bit.
#9 Nice one. That Windsor core looks promising.
xsilver - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
#15oh my bad -- yea I meant the s939 k8t800pro -- names are too damn similar :)
I have the abit av8
hope it supports dual core