What Would You Like to See from Intel's Enthusiast-class Motherboards?

[Tharic-Nar]

In our 'In the TG Lab' look at Intel's DX58SO2 motherboard, I mentioned that while the company has been producing enthusiast-class motherboards for quite some time, enthusiasts haven't exactly noticed - or at least there has been a reason why they haven't been adopting them. The latter is a group I tend to belong to. What are the reasons, and what can Intel do to change our minds?

You can read the rest of our post and discuss here.

[Doomsday]

lol! they should divert this money to their GPU research! hehe!

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by Doomsday

lol! they should divert this money to their GPU research! hehe!

Oh man, *slaps head*.

[Rob Williams]

Come on peeps! I'll be talking to Intel tomorrow about what enthusiasts want to see form the company's boards, so it'd be nice to have a little more input than just my own!

[Optix]

It's kind of hard because they aren't really doing anything wrong. They just aren't doing it to the best of their abilities.

Onboard Quick Sync support without having to result to jumping through flaming hoops via 3rd party software. Surely they have to know that enthusiasts aren't just enthusiastic about games.

While I don't have any face time with any of Intel's boards aside from trying to fix a friend's system, I hear that they are missing some options that make boards monster overclockers. Whether Intel wants to admit it or not, people want to and WILL overclock, even if they have to buy the competitor's boards to do so.

It may be a niche crowd but look at how far things have come to make it more mainstream than even 5 years ago.

[DarkStarr]

Well, lets see, USB3.0 or equivalent, Lots of Sata 6Gbps ports. Built in power/reset buttons for testing. If I had a multimeter I would say voltage test points. LED indicators/display for troubleshooting. Maybe onboard wifi/bluetooth. Easy button for bios clears, maybe more USB up front (so either a 5.25 device or a 3.25 device), I hate having to get up just to plug something in and then unplug it later. Single color scheme like Black and blue (mostly black) or a reverse of that or black and white etc. The baby blue colors get a bit old... I personally would love them to drop all the blue and swap in red or white, that would look awesome. The heatsinks too, that or make them SHINY chrome. Intel boards seem to be locked down on OCing. They need to include everything they can settings wise.

[Rob Williams]

Thanks a lot for the input, guys! I had a great hour-long conference call with Intel's motherboard team earlier, and had misconceptions cleared up, some of my opinions changed, and also got some info about what Intel is doing to improve its enthusiast line-up even further as time goes on. I'll post an article next week on all these bits of info, so stay tuned :-)

[Kougar]

I agree, I don't think they are doing anything wrong... but their boards never did overclock as well as GB or ASUS' did, so they lost some sales there. Had a few rough patches with BIOS's awhile back, and their motherboards traditionally didn't offer the same number of peripherals other manufacturers seemed they sometimes couldn't pack enough of onto their boards. By peripherals I should clarify I mean numbers of ports, newer emerging connection standards, other technologies, and I'll toss board-level OCing features like switches, LEDs, etc into that mix too.

Intel never did anything that let their boards stand out... the last thing they were known for was solid, stable boards, but they perception/marketing advantage has long since eroded away.

Originally Posted by Rob Williams

Thanks a lot for the input, guys! I had a great hour-long conference call with Intel's motherboard team earlier, and had misconceptions cleared up, some of my opinions changed, and also got some info about what Intel is doing to improve its enthusiast line-up even further as time goes on. I'll post an article next week on all these bits of info, so stay tuned :-)

Ah, sweet. Should make for a good read.