In the golden age of motherboards there were dozens of manufacturers and profit margins were nice and healthy. Manufacturers could differentiate themselves based on performance, quality and features. The CPU folks had a different plan in mind. AMD and Intel have been on the road to integration for the past two decades and the motherboard manufacturers have largely suffered because of it.

When the memory controller was in the chipset and there were 3 or 4 competitors in the chipset space, motherboards actually performed differently. These days the memory controllers are integrated onto the CPU die and performance is as high as possible. SATA, audio, ethernet and USB are all either fully integrated into chipsets or only require a small support chip on the motherboard itself. Within the next decade or so these features will move onto the CPU die as well.

My first 430VX motherboard that eventually spawned into AnandTech set me (actually my parents, I was 14) back around $130. Prices haven’t really changed, yet the expectations from end users have gone up. Granted there’s this new ultra high end market that didn’t really exist back then, but the majority of motherboards sold have far more features and don’t cost much more than what they used to.

The pressure is on the motherboard makers to deliver affordable P55 solutions. Without affordable motherboards, Lynnfield will fail - so Intel and end users are both expecting a healthy supply of ~$100 motherboards. As I’m about to show you, doing so is quite difficult.

Read the entire article at AnandTech.