Motherboard costs!

Aurhinius

Aurhinius

Aurhinius

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Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
1,510
Anyone noticed the increasing trend of motherboards now to cost more than the CPU?

Motherboards no longer have a northbridge yet are becoming increasingly expensive.

Just saw the new gigabyte P67-UD7 - £285 ?!?!?!?!?!

I mean seriously does it have gold traces or something? How can that price be justified?

Is anyone else wondering what your money at that price is actually buying?

CPU has the memory controller and the GPU now. Aside from a southbridge/media chip the motherboard isn't doing much other than proving pci express lanes to the CPU and power delivery.

Anyone feel motherboard prices are getting out of hand?
 
Well you do get what you pay for in many instances.

Have you seen what the new Asus Maximus costs? You will be lucky to get change from £300

Both boards have top notch components and both have to pay a premium to nVidea for the NF200 chip which adds a healthy whack to the price. And to be honest they are the flagship product of the range. With all the bells and whistles you could want. The UD7 particularly has the power delivery features that I as a bencher want in a motherboard. And if as a gamer you are going to be pushing your system hard to the max with say two or three top end graphic cards you need to have the top components on your board. Or you have expensive failures.



For basic PC use and gaming you can use any, and I mean any of the entry level motherboards and you will get pretty much the exact same game experience.


But that is like saying driving your own car from point A to B is the same as catching the bus.


Yeah they are worth it if you can afford it and want the full feature set that both bring to the table.
 
CPU has the memory controller and the GPU now. Aside from a southbridge/media chip the motherboard isn't doing much other than proving pci express lanes to the CPU and power delivery.
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Agreed. These are supposed to be mainstream chipset boards anyway.
 
It is slightly depressing. I remember building a Barton machine for £400 in 2004. I think the CPU was about £100 and the motherboard was about £40 and had everything the PC could need at the time.
 
Jonny ///M said:
When I bought my DFI SLI-D I paid £120 and I think the SLI-DR was like £140-150 and that was the top board at the time I think?
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yeah and with that price of board they charged a extra £30 for between SLI and SLI-D and all you needed to do was bridge 2 points on the northbridge to unlock the SLI to SLI-D lol
 
Aurhinius said:
Motherboards no longer have a northbridge yet are becoming increasingly expensive.

Just saw the new gigabyte P67-UD7 - £285 ?!?!?!?!?!
Click to expand...

That board has a NVidia NF200 PCI-E chipset I think, they know people who want full Crossfire/SLI support will pay extra for it.
 
The UD7 is overkill for the most part. The only way that board can justify its pricetag is from its power delivery and clock headroom, and lastly its "brand" name. Everytime someone here at OCUK "bigs" up Gigabyte boards, the pricetag will keep going up lol.
 
Just looked through the way back machine and back in the day the Abit NF7-S v2.0 one of the best boards of it's time cost - £67 inc VAT

And the most expensive, top of the range motherboard for either AMD or intel back then was £140...about the price of standard base models now!
 
mmj_uk said:
That board has a NVidia NF200 PCI-E chipset I think, they know people who want full Crossfire/SLI support will pay extra for it.
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But the cheaper models also have SLi and Crossfire support - do they do it differently then ?

Gigabyte P67A-UD4 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) Due Soon £149.99
(£124.99)

Intel P67, LGA1155, Intel 2nd gen Core i3/i5/i7, 4x DDR3 RAM DIMM, 2x SATA 6Gb/s, 4x SATA 3Gb/s, RAID, 2x eSATA, 124x USB 2.0, 4x USB 3.0, 7.1 HD Audio, LAN, SLI/Crossfire Support

He he - see the typo as well :cool:
 
ih8modem said:
But the cheaper models also have SLi and Crossfire support - do they do it differently then ?

Gigabyte P67A-UD4 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) Due Soon £149.99
(£124.99)

Intel P67, LGA1155, Intel 2nd gen Core i3/i5/i7, 4x DDR3 RAM DIMM, 2x SATA 6Gb/s, 4x SATA 3Gb/s, RAID, 2x eSATA, 124x USB 2.0, 4x USB 3.0, 7.1 HD Audio, LAN, SLI/Crossfire Support

He he - see the typo as well :cool:
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Without the NF200 the cards are limited to 8x/8x in Crossfire/SLI, that UD7 is good for dual 16x/16x, or triple/quad config with the cards at 8x.

edit: actually it looks like triple cards is the maximum supported due to the physical layout of the PCI-E slots.
 
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I could understand the board costing £185 but £285?

Seriously there are other boards there with an NF200 probably that costs half the price.

Is an NF200 chip worth £100 I highly doubt it. 16/16 isn't really needed either.
 
Aurhinius said:
I could understand the board costing £185 but £285?

Seriously there are other boards there with an NF200 probably that costs half the price.

Is an NF200 chip worth £100 I highly doubt it. 16/16 isn't really needed either.
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Which others have the NF200? no it's not worth the extra £100 but for those enthusiasts who want the very best they will happily pay it. Gigabyte have pretty much covered every type of PC user they aren't forcing you to buy their top end.
 
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