DFI leaves consumer motherboard business?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looks like they want to concentrate on industrial motherboards:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/mot...over-for-dfi/1

It seems that Charlie was right:

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/12/...onsumer-mobos/

[jim]

Sad news, definitely don't want to get into a nVidia vs ATi or AMD vs Intel situation.

At least there are a few companies with a presence besides the obvious Gigabyte/Asus/Biostar/MSI, like Zotac, Sapphire and EVGA. Doesn't bode well though with abit and DFI disappearing though.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looks like EVGA is also in trouble:

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/06/...herboard-team/

[scaryjim]

Sad but hardly surprising - after all, Scan were busy clearing all their DFI mobos through constant Today Only listings for months, and there'd been no new products for a considerable period...

[UseItNow]

No.........

I've a few DFI boards.

[Ulti]

First Abit and now DFI, seems EVGA may leave too. And Foxconn may end up leaving the enthusiast crowd too. Guess it's only gonna be Gigabyte, Asus and MSI as the big players in the consumer motherboard markets.

[LuckyNV]

DFI hasn't been the choice of motherboard for quite some time now, they were all the rage with the DFI NF4 series, but they were very very late to the market when Core2 was released, and it was just downhill and a struggle from there.

Abit was the surprise for me though, I felt they were quite steady and would be around for some time.

EVGA... well rumours abound with this one, last I read only one person actually decided to leave but happened to be lead engineer and his team simply followed. Apparently gone to Sapphire (who happen to be planning some Intel boards) Maybe any DFI engineers/designers should go to EVGA?

[Pob255]

The good news seems to be that the EVGA motherboard team has gone over to Sapphire which means we may see some decent AMD based motherboard come out of them now.

I do get the feeling that they where hit hard a short while back with the change over to new chipsets and sockets that intel keep doing, there where some realy intresting motherboard prototypes shown off last year by DFI but all where 775 based.

I'm starting to think that this rappid turn over of technology we have atm is actually very bad for the industry as a whole. It's driving a lot of the smaller companies out, short production runs and development cycles end up with substandard products that need new revisions to fix basic bugs and flaws.
And this whole situation is hidiously environmentally unsound with technology becomeing ever more disposable and almost like a fashionable product (something to get because it's new and "in" only to be chucked out when next seasons version comes out with some minor improvements that could of be on the original if they'd only spent a couple of extra months on it)

[jim]

So Sapphire have swallowed up DFI and EVGA's motherboard teams?

[Terbinator]

I hope that won't mean the end for Nvidia AMD boards though.

[Pob255]

Nope sorry I've edited my post to lear that up, it's just EVGA's motherboard team that Sapphire have taken on, although some of DFI might have gone to them too, as most of their team left at the end of last year, just didn't move on-mass to another company.

@Terbinator, atm nvidia, AFAIK, are not produceing any new desktop motherboard chipsets, after Intel pulled a rather dirty trick to cut out any other chipset manufacture from their core i range, nvidia is just focusing on gpu's and and portable systems (Tegra)

I'm still surprised how Intel have managed to pull of such a dirty shutout trick with the core i series and yet there's not the hue and cry about it that someone like nvidia gets if they try something simular. (eg cutting physx off if an ati card is detected)

[scaryjim]

I'm still surprised how Intel have managed to pull of such a dirty shutout trick with the core i series ...

If Inte's claim is correct, in that the license they sold to nvidia doesn't allow nvidia to make chipsets for Intel processors with on-die memory controllers - and given the lack of said chipsets or any news to the contrary I assume that's the case - then it's not so much an Intel dirty trick as a huge oversight from nvidia's contracts team. I'm not saying I think it's a good idea from Intel, but it certainly doesn't sound like a "dirty trick" to me...

[LuckyNV]

btw a word on EVGA
http://www.evga.com/about/pressrelea...ault.asp?id=81

confirmation some people left, but not the entire team

[Pob255]

If Inte's claim is correct, in that the license they sold to nvidia doesn't allow nvidia to make chipsets for Intel processors with on-die memory controllers - and given the lack of said chipsets or any news to the contrary I assume that's the case - then it's not so much an Intel dirty trick as a huge oversight from nvidia's contracts team. I'm not saying I think it's a good idea from Intel, but it certainly doesn't sound like a "dirty trick" to me...

No the dirty trick was the amount of money Intel put on the cost of the new license which would effectively double the cost of a compeating chipset, which makes it totally unviable for anyone else to make chipsets for core i systems.
Which has left Intel with an effective total monopoly on it while saying legal.

(at least that was the unoffical rumor and the reason we've not seen or heard of any other chipsets)

[scaryjim]

*shrug* Intel can charge what they want for their chipset designs: it's their IP, after all. I'd be interested to know what's happening with AMD chipset license costs, since we haven't seen any none-AMD new chipsets for AM3 motherboards - we've had a couple based on existing nvidia chipsets, but no new ones...