Gigabyte sees weak motherboard orders for 1Q18
Click here to post a comment for Gigabyte sees weak motherboard orders for 1Q18 on our message forum
Samishere
Maybe because GPUs and RAM prices are nearly double what they were last year, and the market is saturated with immature (Ryzen) and rushed platforms (Z370, X299). And maybe it's because the cryptocurrency miners only care about GPUs.
The market will correct itself, i'm sure, but it would correct itself a lot faster if AMD / NVidia restricted mining to workstation cards or created a specific class of card for that purpose. Also DRAM manufacturers need to be investigated for price fixing AGAIN. Seems like every 5 years or so they think they can get away with it again.
Kaarme
Yeah, when especially the RAM but also GPUs are so disgustingly expensive, a mobo alone won't help you much. People upgrading from a DDR4 system to another DDR4 system aren't probably yet so common, and even if they were, it's not like all the old systems would be thrown away, so many would still want or need to buy new RAM modules. It's a pity there aren't more memory manufacturers. Actually it's strange there aren't considering how vital computers are to the modern civilization. Imagine if there were only 2 or 3 car brands in the whole world, huh.
Jagman
GPU and RAM prices are killing mid range and high end PC builds at the moment, unless paying over the odds doesn't bother you that is.
Raider0001
Add to this situation that Coffee Lake motherboards are expensive...
pimpernell
Maybe because gigabyte skimps on important things like vrm and cooling and focus to much on rgb bling?
Asrock and asus got the midrange and highend respectively covered with good price to performance products. (x399/x299 and z370).
Samishere
In addition to being a cash grab from Z270, with "power delivery" sighted as the reason for a new chipset. However, someone has demonstrated Coffee lake can be tricked into running on Z270 chipsets.
The current problems with the consumer hardware market are entirely the creation of the hardware manufacturers themselves. If they want to improve the health of the market they need to fix their anti-consumer practices.
Agent-A01
Having a low core cpu running the same socket is meaningless; it is not possible to get the 6 core working.
xrodney
I would not dare to say that is not realy possible because of two reasons:
- there is no real technical reason for for new CPUs to require change (what intel mentioned as reasons is nonsense)
- do you have idea how difficult it is to even make unsupported CPU running using Bios/FW hack even with one core without full proprietary knowledge and design of intel microcode changes ?
After all Bios update is required for new generations of CPUs to run.
I am not saying it is possible to make it fully working, however I doubt anyone here have enought knowledge and experience to be 100% sure its now.
There were even some rumor/comments from MB vendors that new chipsets were not required.
Anyway from my perspective this is very poor attempt from Intel to increase sales...as usual.
Agent-A01
6 core is much different than the 4 core variant that was 'hacked' to get working.
It is impossible to get a fully functional 4 core, let alone the 6 core.
I'm fully aware of what it takes to do a procedure like that; inserting/replacing CPU microcode into the bios is the easiest part.
Whether or not intel deliberately made it incompatible OR that it wasn't possible to do without changes, nobody knows.
Nobody here is an intel engineer.
ubercake
When a company such as Intel releases three different mainstream architectures in the same year, and one every year in the 5 years prior and each doesn't make a difference for most of the population since Sandy Bridge 2011, people become a little disenchanted with the CPU/Motherboard upgrade/building process.
Also, with AM4, people won't need a new board for a few years as AMD seems to be consumer friendly enough that their sockets can accommodate future processors. This can also reduce the need for new motherboards.
The motherboards are doing less than ever since so many functions have moved to the CPU, yet motherboard prices seem to climb. At the rate eveything is going with more and more functions moving to the CPU, motherboards will soon be a PCB with nothing more than slots and connections with little need for any bridges (former North functions are nearly all on the CPU and South is almost becoming obsolete with PCIe M.2 SSDs, PCIe USB ports, PCIe audio, etc...).
TheDeeGee
There waaaaaaaay too many variants, maybe motherboard manufacturers should cut down by 80%
They have a Gaming, Gaming Pro, Gaming Super, Gaming Super Deluxe, Gamer Legendary, Gamer Legendary Professional... and then the Non-Gaming line has another zillion variants.
Same applies to GPUs with a different variant for every 5 Hz Overclock.
Trihy
Thats a nice 300 dollars motherboard...
It has wifi? No. It has bluetooth? No
Motherboards are boring. So many possibilities and they offer the same i/o from 20 years ago.
Try improving this and we will think about upgrading.
icedman
I believe the mobo market is oversaturated which isn't a bad thing for consumers since it should keep costs down and offer variety but adds alot of expense to the companies designing and building them. Maybe they should just cut down a few of the more redundant model's
sykozis
It's simple. Offer 2 ATX, 2 mATX and 2 ITX boards with each chipset. One with wifi/bluetooth and one without. There's really no need to have more than 2 board models from each manufacturer for each chipset....
user1
I almost bought a new mobo +cpu+ram, but then i saw how much kits of 16gb and 32gb cost. a 32gb kit was gonna cost more than the rest of the computer..... gonna have to pass on that
easytomy
Who the hell buys motherboards now? Of course they see weak orders... Why would anyone buy a single motherboard? Just to frame it on the wall?
When graphics cards cost an arm and a leg, when RAM prices hit record after record... what do you expect?
I'm also waiting for the market to return back to normal (and i don't mean Normal + 15 EUR)... i mean normal; and then I will invest into an upgrade.
I suspect that 90% of people are in my situation.
Agonist
I have to agree. My $129 X370 has 450mb wireless A/C and bluetooth 4.0, and can be swapped out easily for a better wifi blue tooth card. It even has USB 3.1, 2 USB 3.0 headers, I havent seen many high end boards with more then 1, and has 2 m.2, even if 1 is only Gen 10 Gbs
Reddoguk
They'll notice even more bad sales if they don't release Spectre bios updates for 2-3 year old mobo's. I have a system with a FX8xxx on FX990 chipset that my son uses and it's from 2016 and still nothing. Checking everyday but i'm starting to think they won't even bother with AMD FX 990/970 chipset mobo's.
airbud7
So there's to many motherboards yet not enough graphics cards?
miners.
sorry if ot but I saw a row of 1070's on one mobo last night......Man I was jelly as heck!
sykozis
We have retailers gouging on graphics card pricing. memory makers gouging on memory pricing. A motherboard market that's so overloaded with different motherboard variants based on the same chipsets it's stupid and rising prices....and yet, Gigabyte can't figure out why motherboard sales are down.... I can't figure out why I'm seeing 4-6 motherboards based on each of the various chipsets from nearly every vendor. We're seeing chipset functions moved onto the CPU, reducing the complexity of the motherboard itself, but prices seem to go up a little with every new chipset release. Manufacturers, distributors and retailers are directly responsible for the slowing PC market because of price gouging. I mean, seriously.... These companies need to wake up and take a good long look at reality.
