Future of the Motheboards

[Beiruty]

With each new generation of chipsets, more features are being added for FREE on the motherboad. Graphics Chip Makers are making chipset too.

So why do we need a PCI-e (electric) backplane anymore? Why not drop the electric serial bus and replace with serial flexible optical I/O ring.

In addtion, why not integrate the whole Video card into the motherboad. Whether it is Mid-level or Hi-End card. To support future expansion, a basic 100 Gbps Optical ring will be provided on an integratre hub on the botherboard. Devices (Graphics card, North bridege devices, etcs...) can hot swapped into bays instead of PCI-e bus. One other feature of those bays is easier thermal management, they can be internal or external to to a system case, or as add-on to a scalable case.

The cost of such system should not prohibtively expensive with large sacle production.

What do you think?

 

[QueBert]

I would love to see a MB with high end intergrated video. Doubt it'll ever happen though. I can't wait to see a few generations down the road what ATI has in store. Their A64 boards look pretty sweet for the price. I would pay big bucks for a MB totally packed with extras. Gimme something with X800 intergrated and I'll drop 300 on it gladly

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Woah. Dude. Dude...dude. Thisneeds to be in the Highly Technical forum. I have NO clue what you just said !

 

[Beiruty]

Any other feedback, like what do you think about future of the Motherboards?

$300 is not much... the next consoles will do exactly the same integration for $300 or less. The only things are: CPU is not replacable, RAM is not expendable, and there is no I/O optical ring.

In short, a small PS3 Motherboad has so much integration: 3X CPU cores at 3.2 GHz and their VPU has 300M transitors and 2X faster than G6800 GT Ultra plus the other goodies.. all of this is for around $300

So imagine, Take PC MB drop on it a Hi-End Video Card, replace the PCIe with an I/O Optical ring...

Otherwise, what is the diffrentiating factor and the reason to upgrade a motherboad in the future. And in terms of cost if complete PS3 will cost around $300 why a bare bone Motherboard cost $200+?

 

[ProviaFan]

Forget the optical stuff for now... that's too expensive and won't be coming in the near future. Instead, look at what we have now. Hard disks could be connected externally (or however else you like) by SATA-II, which is plenty fast enough. Most everything else could be connected by PCI-Express, which is probably already being planned into such a form factor as to be usable for expansion in laptops. If you want the ultra-tiny weird-looking desktop formfactor, you could just use the same sort of expansion that notebooks can have.

All this could be done now, if you really wanted to spend the money to custom design everything. If you could sell a lot of them, then it would be worthwhile, but the performance-freak crowd like you find on this site is going to be sticking to their desktop form factor systems for quite some time (or moving to SFF if upgradability isn't quite as important), and everyone else probably wouldn't want to pay the price to cover the R&D for some esoteric hardware platform like that.

 

[Beiruty]

Oh one more obeservation, By the time the next GPU is released, a new CPU will released, With a probably a new Memroy Architeture/interface mostl ikely it will require a new chipset and a new motherboard.

If the avergae joe upgrade his PC each 1.5-2 Years, it makes sense to integrate everything on a single motherboard. Now, The cost of decent MB/CPU/Memory/VGU is around $750-$900, In the future such new upgrade will cost some $350.

Couple more features that we may soon see on the PC: Wireless USB (WUSB), for you wireless mouse/Keyboard and WebCam... Cables are the most annoying thing one can cary around... And, BroadBand Wireless networks. WiMAX with download speed of 100 Mbps. More mobility, cut the wire...

Oh HDTV on the PC via whatever WiMAX will be nice too! Watch HDTV on your lap while at the Gate wating for your next flight

 

[ProviaFan]

Batteries always go dead at the wrong time. Wireless kb and mouse are nice for gaming from the couch, but I still apply the old rule I picked up from pro audio gurus: "never use a wireless where a wire will suffice" (or something like that). I had a set of wireless headphones that were given to me by someone who didn't want them any more (surprise, anyone?). They cost as much as a nice set of wired Sennheisers, but sounded more like a $3 Wal-mart special. I'm sorry, but the only computer-related wireless I could see using would be wireless internet if I were in the country and/or driving around town with a laptop. Remember, just because it's "newer" doesn't mean it has to be "better."

On integrated motherboards, we have those already, and gamers don't buy them because they suck. Or, do they suck because no one wants to make them any better because gamers wouldn't buy them? We don't know, but I have to question the wisdom of putting a high-end gfx card on a motherboard, considering how big a standard ATX motherboard is already, combined with the size of a modern GPU and supporting circuitry. We shouldn't need EATX or WTX for this stuff, folks.

 

[Aenslead]

What you say does make sense.

The integration level on the consoles is something to be amused of, but I really do not think the profit is there, in the consoles. Its in the games. Hence, we can have VERY powerful consoles for almost their cost, since companies are geting their money from royalties that come from games.

However, on the PC side of things, the only business these people have is their parts, no royalties coming from no-where, hence the prices are higher.

Its my economical look on the things.

ECS did try to make a high-end integrated video motherboard, with the Xabre motherboard. They worked great and the graphics quality was on par with mid-end solutions... but no one likes compromise. No one likes to have their system "compromised" to only have THIS or THAT installed.

 

[coomar]

i'm pretty sure that they lose money on the consoles for the first 2 years or so, a game is pretty much pure profit and usually in the first year, to buy the console you have to buy 2 games