Epox kicks the bucket, celeronism, and who's next?
 

Hey,

Epox is in extremely bad shape, it won't be long until they put down the books.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...060&Ite mid=1

Selling desktop motherboards just doesn't provide a profit anymore, largely due to Foxconn taking over the market and killing the competition. The only way to make a profit as mobo manufacturer would lie in selling µATX boards.

Obviously this trend cannot be good for us enthusiasts. No profits on our boards means in the longer run no more decent boards for us.
DFI appears to be in bad shape as well, while Gigabyte and ASUS are merging in order to be able to face the competition stronger.

The writer of the next article below here used to work for Epox but left them some time ago. He wrote an article on a phenomenon he calls "Celeronism". I think he has a good point.

http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/content/view/869/2/

So what do you guys think? Are we going to be seeing less and less overclocking boards? Or am I reverting back to 80's style doomscenario thinking?

End of March they canceled their merger
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mainboa...327114724.html

Over the past years I'd say overclocking has only become bigger and bigger. Look at how quickly XtremeSystems increased their forum members. Quality and bios options might get more limited once those big manufacturers take it all over (if they do...). ASUS seems to be one of the toughest to kill though, their product range is so big.... Product diversity might be the only way to survive, unless the big ones follow the same merchandising route.

I think DFI plays a big role why both Epox and Abit got killed in the A64 and X2 war.

Since they grabbed Oskar Wu from Abit they just release better products and they built up their street credibility from nothing with only 1 generation of products.


MSI kinda selfpwned them with products that weren't as good as the ones from Asus and Gigabyte and they couldn't underbid the producers of really cheap motherboards in price. Do you hear even one person suggesting to try a MSI motherboard for the Core 2? I don't.


DFI did a selfpwn on the Core 2 front, they completly missed the 965 craze and Asus and Gigabyte sold their boards to many entusiasts and now noone gives a dam about their 965 board since P35 is the new hotness.


I think Asus (and their subbrand Asrock) still has a great reputation under the system builders and amongs the people that don't overclock and want stability.


Product diversity is the last thing a manufacturer needs. I am still waiting for the big companies to realize how big the costs of such a diversity really is for both them and the consumer at the end. Look at the lineup of Gigabyte for both the 965 and the P35 chipset, that is the horror for any retailer or wholeseller and takes up valuable resources to manage for the producer.


Asus did the first step in cutting features with their P35 line, I think soon others will discover that this offers more than just a cost benefit:

Less error sources, easier bios programming, more perfomance, less time needed to develop because there isn't so much crap to look for ect.

you're talking about 1% of the motherboard market; not really relevant in the end:)

Enthusiast boards don't sell too well you know:)
RD600 sold ~2000 if not less.

you need OEM partners to ship volume in order to dedicate resources for some other project like OC boards; without that, if your product fails to deliver, you have nothing to fall back on

The only thing that building and releasing overclocker friendly boards accomplishes these days is some prestige, PR if you will. It appears to be getting more and more expensive.

The RD600 might be a somewhat extreme example. The chipset should have been released at the same timeframe as its intented competition. Making many enthusiasts skipping it.

That's because of me no?:Dlol