Why does Asus come out with new MOBO every two months?

It seems to me every few months Asus will come out with a new mobo. Do they
think after a few months they have sold all the ones of a particular model
they are are going to sale? Alot of the times the changes don't really seem
that significant and the board has just been modified only slightly to the
extent that a hyphen and 1 or 2 more letters are added to the board's model
number.

Even car manufacturers give it a year before they start over, but sometimes
even a year seems to soon.

 

Each board has specific features that are different. In some cases these new
features are based on newly available technology. In other situations they
are based on market and competitive pressures for new features that drive
product sales.

One advantage of this is that people who don't need all the extra features
don't have to pay for them. My A8N-E has everything I need without all the
extra features of the SLI models, and it costs significantly less than the
high end models.

 

Many of the changes amount to bug fixes. Many other changes
reflect a change to one of more of the many minor parts used on
the motherboard - such as if a chip made by company X in one
batch of motherboards is replaced by a cheaper or better chip
made by company Y in the next batch of motherboards. Relatively
few changes have anything to do with adding/subtracting features.

It should also be noted that the rate of change is much slower in
motherboards targetted at large corporations and gov't
organizations. Organizations like that often will not buy a
computer without rigorous testing to "validate" it, and after
validation will not buy unless they can guarantee a supply of
identical systems and replacement parts for the duration of a
multi-year contract. Changing the motherboard would mean the
lengthy and expensive validation process would have to start all
over again.

If cars were as easy to change as motherboards, you can bet your
buns that the auto manufacturers would be cranking out changes
faster than politicians can tell lies. A new car model costs
$200M to $300M to design and test - motherboard manufacturers
would go tits up if they had to face costs like that.

 

have to keep up with new video and cpu's among other things.

 

Not so sure about that. Asus has come out with a ton of boards that were
still pci and could go between a 2.4ghz and a 3.0ghz.

I cannot see much reason yet to go from my agp8x to pci-x16, but I could see
why someone would go from, say, as 478 socket to a 775. Still, one board
that has nothing to do with that kind of change or changing from pci to pci
express could have as many as 6 versions. I have now even seen a board that
is being marketed as having both pci, pci express, agp, serial, and ide as
though customers might have trouble deciding whether to stay in the past or
move ahead into the future.

I am one I admit. I have actually considered buying a board that had
everything on it so I could keep my old agp, pci cards, and ide devices but
then buy the pci express and serial ata devices later if I wanted to. That
would keep me from changing MOBO's.

 

You have to keep up, in two months the hardware is outdated. They all
do it, just trying to keep up with the latest stuff. You can't compare
to cars, there still using years old hardware just tweaked. For as long
as cars have been around you still only have gas, deisel and hybrid's.

 

Ok but I have a 4 year old computer that has 3 pci slots, an AGP slot,
2.4ghz pcu, and 1 gig of ram. That did not change every two months. After 4
years I am just now thinking about changing computers just so I can go pci
express, although there is technically no software justification for me to
switch yet.

 

I think I was not clear with my post. I was talking about different versions
of the same board, especially in regards to features, as one previous poster
mentioned. Consider this as an example of what I am talking about:

P4S533
P4S533-E
P4S533-X
P4S533-VM
P4S533-MX


The big difference I see in these is the number of pci slots and the number
of ram slots,and some are micro ATX while at least 2 of them are the ATX
form factor. The number of ram slots is no big deal though because they
allow 2gig of ram no matter what. One of the earlier ones has card reader
support while the -MX does not. The ones that don't have card reader
support, have front panel audio support instead. Some have 2 fan sensors
while the others have three. Some have 1 usb header while others have 2.

I saw something similar when ATI had a card out with 12 pixel lines and a
similar card out that had only 8 pixel lines and a memory speed difference
of just 100mhz. Despite that being the only difference, there was an $80
price difference between the two cards.

There is obviously a business or maketing technique here that I am missing.

How much trouble could it be to put card reader and front panel audo headers
on the same MOBO? How much more costly could it be to put 2 usb headers
instead of just 1?

 

I previously answered you post correctly. I knew you were talking about
similar motherboards, with slightly different features, and not revisions of
the same motherboard. You have already explained one difference (micro ATX
vs. ATX). Assuming that all these models are still in production (not just
on dealer shelves) then it is safe to assume there are real differences
between them, and probably more differences than you have identified. Many
people may not care about the differences, but some people do.

Often times the different models are based on different chipset models,
which are not made by the motherboard manufacturers. These chipsets are
usually not released at the same time, so they end up with different
motherboards for each new chipset upgrade.

Regarding USB and card reader headers on the front panel, I would just get a
USB card reader with a USB hub and put it on your desk (connected to your
rear USB).

 

BTW, I own the P4s533 and the P4s533-MX. Really the only difference between
the ATX and the microATX are the number of pci slots and card
reader/frontpanel audio headers. I don't recall the chipsets being different
on any of the boards, but if they were, the difference was negligible. I do
remember that the fsb was the same for each and they all could take the
2.4ghz cpu. I was just using these as examples of my point though.

So then maybe we can say that form factor is the main reason for different
versions of the same board? Well, why not have just 2 boards then instead of
5?

I wonder who has the record for making the most versions of a board? I just
used the p4s533 as an example because I own it.

 

Keep in mind, many if not most of Asus' sales are not to individual
system builders but to commercial system builders and OEMs. Companies
that are building up thousands of systems don't want to waste money on
features they don't feel they need on the board..

 

I am beginning to think you are really dense. The 5 boards and 2 form
different form factors. Above you are comparing two different form factors
and saying there is not much difference other than the size.

But there are feature differences in the boards of the same form factor. The
reasons for this have already been explained to you in excruciating detail,
but you are not able to comprehend it.

 

The typical process with a modern motherboard manufacturer is to
design an OMNIBUS bare motherboard for a given processor family and MB
chip-set and then program the surface mount equipment to just load and
auto-probe-test selected configurations, based on the manufacturer's
market research and desired price-points. The theme is to as closely
as possible match production to demand sweet-spots while producing
as few variants of the base unpopulated motherboards as possible.
Configuring the machine-placement setup for adding or omitting various
components on a given raw motherboard is a trivial operation,
completed in a couple of days for programming for each variant.
Setting up the auto-probe-test for a specific variant might take just
a little longer. However, doing the complete setup for a brand new
raw-ECB layout might take a major re-configuration of the production
and test line. That is why you see limited "families" of
motherboards, but with lots of variants. If some of the variants do
not meet you specific requirements, blame the manufacturer's marketing
reearch teams.

If you examine a typical modern motherboard very closely you will
probably see some empty pad-areas --- they are for other variants,
maybe even OEM versions not available in the retail motherboard chain.


However, technology changes are happening faster in all areas these
days.... witness the current activities at CES, mind-boggling.....
A particular motherboard "family" today may not last more than a year.
Many of such 'family' changes are forced by rapid component
obsolesence. For example, the 915 and 925 chipsets are now obsolete
after about a year of production, incompatible with dual-core -
unsuccessful chipsets and CPUs now have a very short life indeed at
Intel........... The motherboard manufacturers have to dance to both
the component-suppliers tunes and the customers pulling on the
puppet-strings.

John Lewis

 

When you have to result to petty insults, it indicates you have lost the
argument. I refuse to sink down to your level, but if you are so bothered
by my post, couldn't you just simply ignore it and me instead of distorting
the thread and hijacking it?

You have made no comparison of the boards, you are getting all of your
information from me to from your comments, and you are not spending the time
on this necessary to justify my considering any of your comments.

The only good plausible response I got was this one, which certainly did not
come from you:

<"Keep in mind, many if not most of Asus' sales are not to individual
system builders but to commercial system builders and OEMs. Companies
that are building up thousands of systems don't want to waste money on
features they don't feel they need on the board.">


Now please go to bed.

 

That's pretty good Robert, but of course we don't know how many of the
p4s533's were designed for commercial use. And I have to question why anyone
on the commercial end would make a stink over front panel audio/usb
connectors or pci slots. In the p4s533's, there really are no big difference
in features that would significantly change the price. The difference in
price between my two boards was exactly $23. With the exception of the extra
pci slots, it was pretty much the same board feature wise.

I would like to know how much increase in real costs we are talking about
when we go from 3 pci slots to 6?

I tell you what I am going to do this week some time when I am free. I
already have the specs for my two boards, but I am going to get the specs
for all 5 and post them here. I will also try to find the costs of the board
at the time of their release.

 

Right. That's why I mentioned the ATI card. I know it takes very little to
go from 8 pixel lines to 12, but ATI still made a card with both.

As far as the ps4533-mx goes, I just put in a usb 2 card reader It is a
pretty nice one actually. It also had a 3.5" inch floppy built into it.

The thing that gets me with the ps4533 family is that the first 3 boards had
more slots and only a 2 or 3 trivial features more than the final board,
which is the last one I ended up with. But the price difference was about
$20.

Between the -vm and the -mx versions, the difference in price was only $10.
The difference in specs is 100mhz more in FSB speed and one could have a
2.0ghz processor while the other could have a 2.4.

If anyone is interested, I just found a page that had 4 of the 5 boards and
a short bio of each. But there are other Asus families here that I did not
know about too. Here is the link:
http://www.baber.com/motherboards/asus_p4.htm

 

I did better, I built my computer in 1998, using high end stuff, p2b-ds, and
bought the software I use (as opposed to the useless crap companies give
you). It cost me around $2K for everything but the computer lasted 6 years.
I just now upgraded my motherboard to an a8v and using all my old stuff
(disks, video card).

I had no reason to upgrade as everything was running pretty good but decided
to get a little more speed. I won't do a major upgrade until 64-bit is in
full swing. It will take a while for windows vista to solidify and amd is
planning a 940 pin processor, etc.

-g