Help the Economy, Buy a Motherboard
PrintYou probably won't pull the global economy up by its bootstraps simply by upgrading your motherboard, but you will help reverse the downward sales trend mobo makers have had to contend with. According to a report by the Taiwanese Market Intelligence Institute (MIC), only 32 million motherboards were sold in the first quarter of 2009, a 16 percent drop from one year ago.
While sales in the US were down, the European market showed the most severe slowdown, according to the report. And it doesn't look to get any better in the second quarter of 2009.
"Markets in each region are entering the off-season, and channel inventory replenishment activities are slowing down," said Vincent Chang, MIC industry analyst. "market shipment momentum is thus weakening. Only several PC brands have continued to make procurements in April."
Chang went on to predict that year end sales figures, while still comparatively dismal, will fare a little better. He expects worldwide motherboard shipments to be in the 134 million range, or a 9 percent drop from 2008.
So there you have - tell your significant other you're only upgrading to Core i7 to help save mobo makers.
Image Credit: agpsolutions.com.au
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Yusonice
April 30, 2009 at 9:29pm
Of course it would! Its beneficial to both countries!
If its sold in us obviously the distributor makes money, and the shop from which u bought it from earns too. And the country benefits from taxing the product. twice at least.
winmaster
April 30, 2009 at 2:00pm
How does buying something that isn't made in America help the economy. I'm not saying that you shouldn't go treat yourself to a new board, just that I don't think that it will help the economy.
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The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Blaze589
April 30, 2009 at 10:03am
I'm in need of a new build as my Pentium D 830 build is showing it's age when watching HQ flash movies on Hulu.com [480p] and Gametrailers.com [720p]; it's not a problem when using hardware accelerated plug-ins such as Quicktime and Windows Media player, when supported of course. Even though I'm highly inclined to take your sage advice, I cannot. The price for i7 mainboards are just too high and the reviews don't fair any better on newegg.com; they're very sporadic. It would be a better idea to buy AMD's new flagship CPU and AM3 mainboard which have better reviews than the i7 mainboards. I'll idle and endure for the time, trying a few configs in excel and weigh my options.
mpcrsc562
April 30, 2009 at 10:03am
just last week, i bought a new gigabyte board, a phenom 2 940, and some ram. what prize do i get? lol. kinda pissed that i missed fry's sale on the phenom by one day--was on sale for $170.
Kasekopf
April 30, 2009 at 8:36am
The last two motherboards I purchased both had to be exchanged once each because they did not work. Also, I will never purchase a board that makes me "activate" drivers, as many of the X58 boards do.
I love to upgrade my system, but the price and headaches that come with it now make me think long and hard before I do. Have you tried to get a driver from Asus' site? It is one of the painful sites on the web to try and use.
jcollins
April 30, 2009 at 9:28am
Eh? Activate drivers? WTF? That's the first time I've heard about, it sounds insane.
Side note, the MaximumPC guys have ranted about the ASUS site in the past on their podcasts. They totally agree with you (and so do I). You'd think ASUS would buy a clue and upgrade their web/ftp server from a 286...
Caboose
April 30, 2009 at 9:32am
It's not just the website. Have you ever had to call for support? Try activating an extended warranty for a netbook on their website. It doesn't work! And then you get to spend 45min on something that Asus wants to call "on hold" (The phone rings and rings, then an automated message, then it rings some more) before you get to talk to someone, who can't help you in the first place, so then it's back to step one!
You'd think that one of the larges computer component manufacturer's in the world would have a better support system. Hell, Dell is a million times better than Asus, and Dell sells a lot of crap!
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
QUINTIX256
April 30, 2009 at 8:31am
Who is trying to convince everyone that they are the only ones legally allowed to make chipsets for their core i7's, and go through sockets more often than many of us buy fresh socks, AMD has been incredibly faithful to the AM2/AM2+ platform.
I suspect they will do the same for the AM3 platform. I'm starting to wonder if intel sells their cpus at a loss and make up for it with their chipsets.
Help a stuggling CPU maker and the motherboad industry: buy an AM3 motherboard.
You can have your recession. I'm not participating.
Caboose
April 30, 2009 at 9:36am
The AM3 CPU is backwards compatible with (most) AM2+ motherboards (usually after a BIOS update). AMD forward thinks, Intel backward thinks.
I remember the days when I could use a Socket 7 motherboard for AMD or Intel CPU's.
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
ashegam
April 30, 2009 at 7:49am
Fuck that. I'm not buying these over priced mother boards. I don't know what the fuck happened but in the past 2 years or so mother boards have gone as high as $400. Just a few years ago the verage mother board was like $120-140 and you had to justify spending $200 on some of the best boards like the DFI lan party series.
But now even a basic motherboard for an I7 is like $300 and goes up from there.
So My ass won't be saving these bastards who screwed themselves in the first place. Bring back the price motherboards and I'll think about upgrading my board.
water_man3
April 30, 2009 at 12:27pm
Exactly. I'll gladly upgrade my AM2 board to an AM2+ or AM3 before I buy an overpriced Core I7 system.
shnoogie
April 30, 2009 at 8:17am
I agree with Ashegam.
Motherboards have become expensive, proprietary, unreliable pieces of ####, and I'm sick of having to replace my board, CPU, and RAM all at the same time, EVERY time I want to upgrade.
I miss the good old days of nice simple boards without the crappy onboard Realtek audio and Lan, and those horrible Jmicron RAID controllers... Seriously, remove all that junk and give me 7 PCIe X16 slots and be done with it.
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