Jim, RE: <Now I know why Intel makes their own motherboards.>
If I remember correctly, Intel entered into Mobo business for a different reason - to bundle several of their I/O chips and interface chips. Those days, motherboards used tons of standard digital and I/O chips - such as, 8251 UART for serial I/O, 8255 for Parallel I/O, 8257? Keyboard controller, DMA controller, Interface Controller, etc. It used to be a very lucrative business for them. IMHO, now a days; from the profit point of view, motherboard business is not a big deal for Intel. But, from the strategic point of view, it allows intel to have perfect product launches and to allow Intel picked technologies, and Intel defined standards to succeed (ex: PCI vs VISA bus) in the market.
Switching to another subject - Microcenter in the Bay area started selling Comapq Athlon 500(presario5838) and 600(presario 5868) systems. I also noticed that Frys here, is advertising Emachines K6-2 300MHz system, besides Athlon550 CPUS with motherboards. AMD must be disposing of its old inventory of K6-2s.
I don't see Gigabyte and MSI showing their Athlon Motherboards on their Web pages, eventhough they are shipping them. What are they afraid of? Are they (as Steve Harris puts it) "Don't make Intel Mad" type sites?
Regards,
Goutama |
