TECHiNSIGHT - Must-Have Motherboards Story

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The industry is full of motherboard options, but all too often purchasing choices are made on the basis of only two criteria: price or pizzazz. How cheap can a board be in pursuit of the lowest possible system BoM, or how much bling is piled on in order to lure enthusiasts? Smart resellers know these aren't the paths to success. Cheap boards offer no margin and can actually lose a system builder money after support issues arise. Enthusiast boards, stressed to the Nth degree by users, can crumble just as easily if the vendor hasn't invested the necessary resources into stability as well as sizzle.

In the motherboard world, the name Intel has become almost synonymous with stability. The old assumption is that Intel boards may not have the latest in features or performance, much less competitive pricing, but when you want a platform that doesn't generate headaches, Intel is what you buy. Historically, this was a fair statement, and some of this sentiment remains true today. But times have changed, and Intel mainboards are not the stodgy standby choices of yesteryear. Intel has seen the movements within the industry, recognized the needs of its system builder partners, and responded accordingly. Intel motherboards have gone from being musty to must-have. Here's why.

Shock and "Ah-ha!"

You don't have to do much comparative bench testing to find that some motherboard brands clearly put more effort into R&D than others. We've even seen boards that failed to POST as soon as the builder plugged in one of the bundled daughter cards. Intel has a reputation for stability, but we wanted to get a sense of why and whether this reputation was still earned. We ended up speaking with Anthony Constantine, validation development manager for Intel desktop boards, and learned that the average Intel mainboard validation process lasts four to six months. As a case in point, the 965 series launched in late July but entered into validation and refinement way back in December.

According to Constantine, compliance with industry specifications, such as the FCC's, and even Intel's own specs are only a beginning point. For instance, Intel documentation states that motherboards are validated to perform at temperatures from 0 to 55 degrees Celsius. In reality, Intel tests boards at 60 degrees and above. Similarly, Intel states that voltages on the +3.3V, +5V, and +12V rails should accommodate 5% variance, but the company validates boards at 6% or above. Intel boards are tested to withstand 16,000 power cyclings, but 965-based products often went through 32,000 or even 48,000 cycles to ensure that the platform was bulletproof.

"And the shock and vibe tests our boards go through are ridiculously strenuous," says Intel desktop boards marketing manager Brian Jarvis. "The D101 board was held up for several weeks because it wouldn't pass shock and vibe. Actually, it was coming back as questionable—not failing, just questionable. And we'd even do that on a $60 D865GSA board. Our lowest-end boards go through the exact same testing and validation as our D975 BadAxe.

More specifically, Constantine notes that boards are tested to withstand a 50 G drop shock and vibration rigors that he refers to informally as "the FedEx scenario," wherein a system might be boxed with no padding, thrown into several vans and planes, and driven for many miles, a process he describes as "unusually rigorous."

Of course, physical stamina in only part of a motherboard's overall quality. The foundation of Intel's stability reputation comes from products' resistance to electrical problems, BIOS glitches, and all manner of shoddy workmanship that can contribute to system problems.

"When an Intel motherboard goes to rev 1, it's not like other motherboards," says Brian Jarvis. "That thing has gone around and around and around internally, and part of what allows us to have that luxury is that we've had processors in-house longer than any other motherboard manufacturer. Obviously, we have to develop something to test those chips on, and this has helped us to always have very strong board products right from launch."

Despite all of this, Intel isn't resting on business as usual. The company continues to search for ways to increase motherboard quality. One example is a three-year project currently in progress, a cooperative study between Intel and the Institute for Information at Humboldt University of Berlin. The study focuses on "development and implementation of motherboard failure prediction models and methodology which may be used for failure prevention or a speedy recovery. The proposed approach may result in an order of magnitude improvement in availability." No doubt, this would be a huge asset for all Intel motherboards, but the ramifications for iAMT and vPro in particular are very compelling.

Another thing that distinguishes Intel from other motherboard manufacturers is how tightly its product development is interwoven with customer input. Intel constantly receives feedback on existing products from both end-user and channel sources. This gets funneled back to the teams making the product decisions and weighed alongside Intel's priorities for being an industry leader. In other words, there's always something of a tug-o-war between customer requests and corporate beliefs about market trends.

"eSATA is an interesting example," says Jarvis. "You're starting to see several vendors put it on their boards. But the requests from our customers has been relatively small. Surprisingly small as far as feedback goes, which is curious, because just looking at it, you'd think, ‘Sure! Let's see that take off. It looks like a great alternative.' This could be because there just aren't many drives available with eSATA yet, but regardless, that lack of feedback is why you don't see eSATA on our present 965 boards."

Interestingly, this process also works in the other direction. Back when the same 965 boards were still under construction, the design teams wanted to remove PS/2 from the entire product family. The designers went to the Retail Products Group with their choices, but the ensuing customer feedback paired with previous feedback already on file amounted to one conclusion: The world isn't ready to let go of PS/2. So it was added back into the specs. Similarly, while parallel ATA was removed from the 965, many boards still keep the feature through a discrete controller.

Unbeatable Warranty

Since the odds are that you're an Intel Product Dealer, this is sort of preaching to the choir. You already know that Intel has the best motherboard warranty in the industry. Most manufacturers offer one year to buyers on their boards, perhaps two at the outside. Intel does three years on every boxed board purchased through authorized distributors, with the aged D845GVFN being the only one-year exception.

Resellers who are members of the Intel Product Integrator or Intel Premier Provider programs also have the benefit of an Advanced Warranty Replacement (AWR) option. AWRs can be claimed from the distributor for up to 30 days from the purchase date. IPDs can have up to six advance replacements in the pipeline at any given time; Premier Providers can have ten. For those who might not do as much sales volume, anyone in Intel's regular Channel Membership Programs can use the standard warranty replacement, through which Intel will issue a replacement board from the most local parts depot immediately upon receipt of the defective unit. Again, the SWR is valid up to 30 days from purchase, and resellers can have up to 20 active SWR requests at once.

We shouldn't overlook that these return options are in addition to Intel's toll-free, 24 x 7 technical support via phone or email available to all active Intel channel program members. For resellers who offer round-the-clock support, this alone can be a real godsend. But also consider that Intel tech support staff are fluent in English, and we all have enough experience in dealing with manufacturer support that is not, yes? Enough said there.

We should re-emphasize that Intel's desktop board warranty applies to the entire product line, not just the higher-end SKUs. Intel fields a lot of calls from resellers asking what the warranty is on this or that lower-end part. They're all the same.

"Speaking of value boards," adds Brian Jarvis, "you can go out and find a $30 or $40 board, but that product is never going to come with an advance warranty replacement. You're not going to get Intel's class of service from a $35, $40 motherboard. I would argue anybody to the grave on that point. The validation that we put into every board is worth $15 to $20, and it's worth that amount in the final BoM every time. We've had system builder after system builder tell us that, and it's been the number one factor behind the success of our value segment board line, like the D865GSA. Dealers say it's an amazing price for a board they don't have to worry about and can deploy anywhere without ever having to look back."

Pushing Evolution Uphill

No one questions the fact that technology changes and evolves. Applications get updated, the benefits of better performance become apparent, and no one now would dare say, "OK, the PC industry will never need more than this." There will always be room for improvement.

Sometimes improvement comes in the form of performance increases or addition of features and capabilities, but with motherboards, evolution is often about making the basic architecture of the PC more robust and better able to accommodate that performance and feature expansion. One contemporary example is the BTX (Balanced Technology Extended) form factor. An industry standard form factor spearheaded by Intel, BTX seeks to replace the ATX standard devised by Intel in 1995. BTX repositions where components are placed on the motherboard, moving cooler components out to the sides and lining up the hottest components down the board's middle so that a single, relatively unobstructed airpath can move the greatest amount of heat with the least effort. Combined with new thermal modules covering the CPU and power circuitry, BTX's key objectives are to allow for more diverse cooling solutions, cool systems more efficiently, drop fan counts and noise output, and reduce system height profiles. The motherboard is the key to making all of this happen.

The catch is that Intel released the BTX spec in 2003, before the low wattage movement in processors swept the industry. Chips were hot and getting hotter, but ATX was still able to cope with present-day SKUs, so many manufacturers and buyers chafed against the extra costs of form factor migration, pushing out the "critical mass" adoption point far beyond its originally planned early 2005 window. Now that low voltage has given ATX thermal envelopes a temporary reprieve (after all, rising core execution unit counts can't keep us under 80W forever), many in the channel have written off BTX as an overreaching, unnecessary flop. This ignores the low-profile and noise reduction benefits of BTX—two reasons why large OEMs now sport the new form factor in over one-third of their designs.

Because of the disparity between channel and tier-one perceptions of BTX, you still don't see many reseller-friendly BTX SKUs. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely to change anytime soon. With channel BTX sales unable to gain much traction, the current trend increasingly points toward picoBTX thriving in small form factor systems while more mainstream desktop formats remain with ATX. In a year or two, as the number of cores and perhaps processors continues to rise, the larger BTX formats may have their day to shine. Until then, Intel still deserves recognition for taking the reins and addressing a serious industry roadblock, even if that roadblock has been pushed back a few more miles.

Another field in which Intel hopes to lead the industry is in environmentalism. Over the years, Intel has taken some knocks in this area, but the last decade has seen the company grow increasingly committed to becoming an industry leader. The first lead-free motherboard we ever saw in our offices was an Intel reference board, and the company accomplished this well before the European Union RoHS mandate (see www.rohs.org).

"Everybody should be concerned about being green," says Jarvis. "Intel would have moved this direction even without the mandate in the EU, although it probably brought us to it earlier than we would have otherwise. I won't lie. It's been painful. It's been confusing for a lot of our customers in discerning what is and isn't RoHS-compliant. It's cost us millions and millions of dollars. But clearly it's the right thing to do. On the 915s, we had to analyze every product and go back and re-engineer board components that wouldn't meet the RoHS standard. New parts, new suppliers, retooling in the fabs. It took a lot of effort from a lot of people. I know other manufacturers are now adapting to RoHS, as well, but we felt it was a big priority to meet those requirements as early as possible."

Unfortunately, America has been less proactive in its environmental manufacturing directives, but for resellers who bid on European export business or want to broadcast a green message to their customers, having a RoHS-compliant foundation within your PCs is a must.

Simplicity in Diversity

Times change. Intel's old reputation as the go-to brand for business desktop boards remains well-founded, but the company understandably wants a broader following. One very lucrative segment in which Intel has been almost wholly absent was the enthusiast sector, a space dominated by names like ASUS, ABIT, Gigabyte, and MSI. Enthusiast boards are typified by everything-but-the-kitchen-sink feature breadth, cool-looking components, and friendliness toward overclocking—all areas that Intel has generally disregarded until now. We first noticed a break from the past with the D955X boards, but the newer D975XBX (a.k.a. "BadAxe") is the company's pinnacle of enthusiast pursuit and the flagship of the Extreme board family.

"When we first got production runs on the 975 boards," says Jarvis, "even the engineers in-house were excited by the stability of the board owing to the engineering that went into it—the performance of the voltage regulators and other features that allowed them to go in and work with the BIOS team to push the overclocking on that board more than they'd originally hoped they could."

Most Intel boards offer only a 10% "burn-in mode," a number safe enough for a stability-minded manufacturer but laughably conservative to any enthusiast. The BadAxe is Intel's first board to offer a 30% overclock setting. But of course overclocking involves more than just the CPU. On-board voltage regulation is critical because even when the processor has lots of above-spec headroom (and you'll often find a substantial amount of headroom in the new Core chips), if the motherboard can't handle the load placed on the VREG, the system won't overclock well. Intel designed the D975XBX's VREG to be exceptionally hardy. Online buzz and rumors are already building for a fourth quarter "BadAxe 2" sequel with even more overclocking options, but don't expect Intel to abandon its prim past. The Extreme series is the exception to the rule. The 965 line still only offers 10% overclocking.

The enthusiast space isn't the only area in which Intel hopes to grow. For many years, the vendor has more or less left the value market, characterized today by sub-$500 PCs, to other brands. Still, this is good volume business, and perhaps Intel has observed a "trickle-up" effect wherein companies that buy one brand for their value boxes eventually migrate that brand into higher-end purchases. Whatever the reasoning, Intel is now making a hard push into the value segment with boards such as the D865GSA (sub-$60). The 865 "Springdale" chipset remains one of Intel's all-time best-sellers, and the company has revived this board with a new Socket T to replace the old Socket 478. With Hyper-Threading support (and thus the ability to leverage two processor threads), the D865GSA delivers a remarkably affordable way to build a fully featured integrated graphics platform for the Pentium 4 HT or Pentium D. There are plenty of motherboards at this price point, but none offer Intel's stability and support.

So with desktop boards spanning from the very high to the bargain basement, Intel has opted to help resellers on another front: marketing clarity. Resellers and end-users alike have long been faced with challenges in finding the right board SKU. This one might have more USB ports, and that one might have a better IGP. Where do you start, and how do you know which is best for a given system without an exhaustive knowledge of the product line?

Thus arose the new use of families for Intel's motherboards. There are five groups: Classic, Essential, Media, Executive, and Extreme. The goal is to let resellers or users start by selecting their application type, then choose a physical form factor, and the SKU should then be obvious. The actual number of boards offered hasn't changed, but the new organization makes the head count seem considerably less.

"Intel acknowledges that our product line is broad enough that it can make things confusing for our resellers and distributors," says Jarvis. "We heard the call loud and clear to have a leaner lineup of offerings. So even all of the products you see on our table of current motherboards won't make it to distribution, and we're looking for ways to pare things down even more."

In general, board families are segregated by both hardware features as well as bundled software. Only Extreme boards are going to offer enhanced overclocking benefits, for instance, and most Viiv-ready motherboards (with DH southbridges) will fall into the Media family. Executive boards, being more aimed at business desktops, are likely to offer security features. Similarly, Intel's software bundle is skewed for each specific family. Only the Executive Series lacks MusicMatch Jukebox and InterVideo Home Theater Silver, for example, but only the Executive models come with Farstone VirtualDrive. The Essential Series lacks any Intel Audio package, and only the Extreme and Media SKUs come with Audio Studio Pro. These are also the only families to include Norton AntiVirus.

The upshot is that the new organization will help resellers save time both in the front room sale process and the back room build configuration. Moreover, system builders will be able to offer a better, broader array of motherboards more quickly than ever before. You've probably sold Intel boards in the past and sell some now. We trust that with a deeper understanding of the steps the company has taken to improve its offerings, you and your customers alike will recognize why Intel boards have become one of the few must-haves of the desktop component world.