Something Fishy: It's mid-January and no nForce4 Ultra motherboards...?

[jblaty]

:disgust:

Most of the major review sites have the major board manufacturers shipping the nForce4 Ultra motherboards BEFORE the SLI boards. Depending on who you read, they were saying November or December, so many of us have decided to wait. Well, we're still waiting, and the SLI boards are out.

Personally, I have been waiting for the Asus A8N-E Premium motherboard. After poking around a little, 2 eCommerce sites have the board as "discontinued" now, and it was never released!! Asus doesn't have the board on its website. MSI's version, the K8N Neo4 Platinum is nowhere to be found, except on its website.

My questions are: what the heck is going on with the nForce4 Ultra chipset? Are these manufacturers in kahootz with nVidia to delay production of the Ultra, so we spend more money on the SLI variety? Is the nForce4 Ultra chipset flawed in some way? Is there a chipset supply issue? Consumers want to know what is going on, but it's blatantly obvious that the manufacturers are playing some sort of game.

Personally, I do NOT plan on spending my cash on SLI. I don't need it, I don't want it. What I want is an nForce4 Ultra based motherboard. I will not give into a marketing ploy to upsell me on something I don't want.

Many people would like to get to the bottom of this, as I've read on many of the forums. Perhaps AnandTech can get to the bottom of it?

 

[Ackbar]

Other than Chaintech, take a look at some of the "Back-Ordered" Ultra mobo prices and compare it to the SLI mobo from the same manufacturer. If you take a look, the price difference is not that great. I'm guessing that mobo manufacturers are realizing that SLI is going to be very popular and they can bring it to a relatively close price to the Ultra (consider how little of a change in manufacturing they have to make to get a SLI vs Ultra) or alternatively bring the Ultra UP to the price of the SLI. With how popular SLI is (in theory) as an upgrade path, for $10-30 more a lot of people are going to jump on it. Now that its obvious that SLI mobos are very popular (just look how many threads on any mobo forum are about the A8N-SLI) we may be seeing even less Ultra mobos coming out. I hope this is not the case, but as someone who wants to upgrade a 6 year old computer in the next few months, I can't wait any longer to find out. Not to derail the topic, but I'd suggest that people interested in the Ultra take a look at other PCI-E 939 chipsets out there (VIA has one on the Asus A8V-E board for example) in case our hopes of getting an Ultra are dashed.

 

[Demo24]

you can have the A8v

http://www.monarchcomputer.com...mp;Category_Code=A64MB

closest board to Ultra apart from Chaintech: http://www.monarchcomputer.com...mp;Category_Code=A64MB

 

[jblaty]

Ackbar,

I don't put any confidence in "PRE-ORDER" pricing. The Ultra is supposed to be less expensive than the SLI, for a reason. I suppose that the best response I have is: how do you price something that isn't available, and there's no word as to when or if it will become available? DTT Computer had the Asus A8N-E Premium listed for $180 -- which IS priced less than the lowest street price for the Asus A8N-SLI. I'm not basing my decision on price, I'm basing it on features. The biggest feature for me on the Asus nForce4 Ultra is a passively-cooled chipset. From the looks of it, the Asus and Chaintech are the only Ultra boards to be passively cooled.

 

[Ackbar]

Agreed, "back-ordered" pricing is not accurate in and of itself. I think the difference between backorder prices from the same manufacturer is relatively accurate though, obviously time will tell. My point is just that the mobo prices for Ultra vs SLI were not that different (from the same manufacturer of course) which is not hard to believe even if the stores have the mobos on back order. I think in the long run, the Ultra will reduce in price... but how long that is and how much relative to SLI boards is the question. Personally, I think it's going to be a while before an substantial shipments of Ultra boards are available then prices may begin to drop. My opinion: don't hold your breath for Ultra in massive quantities.

 

[jblaty]

DEMO24,

Thanks for the suggestions. However, I'm not interested in Via-based motherboards -- I've had too many problems with them in the past. The Gigabyte motherboard is the only other one that I might consider. However, it uses the plain vanilla nForce4 4X chipset, which is much more limited than Ultra or SLI flavors. I'm looking to build a silent "Enthusiast" level PC, not an entry-level one. Thanks anyway.