ITotals - December `2002
Motherboards
The past month was especially notable for the immense activities by motherboard manufacturers. All of them left a mark, each in its own way. For Intel, that month wasn't as fruitful as expected, at least in the part of specific products released in December (a few 845GE/PE-based motherboards don't count). As for the news, things are entirely different. Among the news to date, of note is the information on Intel problems with AGP in the E7205 and E7505 (Granite Bay and Placer) chipsets - data distortion and problems in the cache functioning. This is easy to fix (or bypass) through a BIOS re-flash, but it's a fact anyway. We have already reviewed the first Granite Bay motherboard, the Gigabyte 8INXP, which left an indelible impression.
Gigabyte 8INXP (Granite Bay)
Next are Asus P4G8X and Iwill P4GB.
Asus P4G8X (Granite Bay)
Iwill P4GB (Granite Bay)
Meanwhile, the official names for further Intel chipsets aka Springdale and Canterwood have been announced. Basically, the names are quite evident: the Springdale line will be dubbed as the i865 (G, P, and PE), with the Canterwood, a workstation version, heir to Granite Bay, dubbed as the i875. The latter will be produced in the only version - P. As for the Springdale, we can't help mentioning a spicy stuff for those into overclocking: this is the first time Intel solves the overclocking restrictions in its i865/i875-based motherboards!
One more pleasant albeit predictable thing is the coming price reduction for the company's chipsets expected already in this quarter. To be more precise, on 30 March, at the very end of it. The 845 line will go down by $1-2 clearing the way to new-generation chipsets. Not a big deal though, but remember that these chipsets went down in price as much on 30 December.
Clearly, VIA chipsets will be at any rate cheaper, that's why the Soltek SL-85FRV-R built on the P4X600 chipset was just announced in December. But it's curious that the chipset itself hasn't been announced to date. In any case, even though it's still unknown how much a motherboard based on the dual-channel PC2700 chipset from VIA will cost, but we can stay assured it's going to be far much cheaper than the similar solution based on the Granite Bay chipset. The P4X600 chipset might be the last to be codenamed this way. Next will be the PT600 (the former P4X600A) and the PT800. The company decided to change the scheme of designating chipsets for Pentium4, and made a good job of that - the names turned shorter and handier.
Nevertheless, the change of names is unlikely to help evade legal proceedings from Intel. For that, VIA has its own attorneys: no sooner had the British Court of Appeal rendered decision at Intel's suit late this month to ban sales of VIA chipsets and motherboards on VIA chipsets in favor of VIA and initiated investigations on Intel's development patenting activities than in just three days VIA lodged a complaint to the Taiwan Trade Commission blaming Intel of unfair competition. That was much more serious than out there in Britain or Germany where VIA had previously lost the legal procedure.
For AMD it seems like no new platforms are required after the emergence of KT400, and Pentium4 chipsets are under strict legal pressing. So it's no surprise that in November VIA's sales volumes hit the $66.8 mln mark, which is 14.2% lower than a year before. On the other hand, there are other causes like seasonal recession because of which the November results reported by largest motherboard manufacturers got worse compared to the previous months, while SiS preserved its positions primarily due to the initiated mass supplies of the Xabre 600.
And things with it are going to the better. It's no secret SiS can't cope with the demand for its chipsets despite the fully loaded factory capacities. That's why the company decided to resort to the help from an OEM partner. And the choice fell upon UMC! That's the UMC against which SiS used to bring suits.
First, rumors had it there was sort of a rapprochement taking shape, but late in December there was announced both parties set up cross-licensing relations and established an alliance! What is more, late in December UMC contributed $18 mln to double its share in the SiS capital to make up 4.46% of the total stock. So things with SiS are going to the better. What makes us think so is the prospective dual-channel SiS655FX chipset with support for PC3200 and FSB800 as well as the fact that SiS has implemented HyperThreading support for all of its chipsets starting with SiS645DX (albeit of revision B that is just about to produce).
All is really promising unless Intel interrupts this flight for SiS who is facing problems with the FSB800 licensing. At least, through hearsay, Intel won't give in this version of the bus easily, which is logical: Intel's recent chipsets proved to be pretty successful, and where SiS can compete Intel is the price, of course. Then why not to correct the disparity at the expense of license taxes?
Maybe that's why NVIDIA once decided not to take the trouble of getting the license from Intel but restricted itself to producing chipsets for AMD, which is what they have still been doing up till now. Quite recently, nForce2 came into play, so it's no surprise motherboards on its base are still being promoted by Biostar, Chaintech, FIC, MSI...
But ATI, unlike NVIDIA, contrived to get a license for the Pentium 4 system bus much earlier than others. This can be already used as some sort of a criterion: Intel certainly favors to the weaker market players and as soon some of the players stands on the way trips it up at once. That used to be the case with VIA, NVIDIA, now it seems to be the turn for SiS: Unlike them, ATi has a lot of room to climb up - this year the company is planning three new chipsets for Pentium 4 and two for Athlon 64.
Meanwhile, AMD is already announcing a list of its partners for the production of Opteron motherboards based on its own chipsets this year. Among the lucky stars are MSI, FIC, Gigabyte, Tyan and Arima. A very strange choice, isn't it? At least it's absolutely not clear how the list was made and why Asus is missing in it.
The second-level manufacturers are fond of producing rather weird motherboards. No one can tell the reason why Soltek produced two new Granite Bay and nForce2 boards in December all gold-plated from head to foot, AOpen is tampering with boards equipped with vacuum lamps illuminated by specially mounted LEDs, Elitegroup keeps on reinventing motherboards with integrated graphics chips onboard - Gameunion 746, as well as with Xabre 200 featuring 64MB of local DDR. But this tampering always has a definite plus - such novelties are worshipped by the computer press which keeps hyping them with lots of photos for dessert!
Indeed, it's time manufacturers took care of increasing sales volumes a bit: the November totals show that some of them should have raised the alarm upon looking at the shattered sales volumes! This primarily concerns Gigabyte and MSI, since their competitors exhibited quite positive trends. Among the most successful competitors is ECS that stays as the leader at sales volumes (in quantities of pieces sold), with ASUS running closest and reluctant to give in easily. In this quarter ASUS is about to start producing new Springdale motherboards for Intel, which should add 3-4 mln boards more for the year 2003. MSI is also doing pretty well - rumors have it this year it's going to become an OEM-partner with Dell.
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