Ultimate Gamers Motherboard

[Rayza]

I've noticed that all the motherboard manufacturers are all putting onboard video and onboard audio onto all their boards nowadays. Most gamers i know will never use an onboard video card and most of them have put in an audio card to improve performance and reduce the load from their cpu. Imagine what they could put on the board if they did away with the devices that never gets used by gamers.

Here's what i think they should remove:

Parallel Port

Onboard Video

Onboard Audio

Floppy Drive Controller - when last did you use this?

What they should put on:

64bit SATA Raid system with support for at least 4 drives

Firewire Port - you always have to buy an extra card for this, unless you have an audigy 2

Anyone else got any ideas?

[boooggy]

well all big mainboard producers have built obos for gamers. and on this mobos u will never find onboard video.......

and sometimes onboard audio is not bad at all.... ex: sounstorm, creative sound on some msi mobos....

[tarquel]

Parallel Port - Agreed! Who hasn't got a USB/LAN/WiFi printer by now lol

Onboard Video - Get rid of it or make it very easy to switch off (tho most are)

Onboard Audio - If it would help free resource on the mobo for other things, get rid - most will buy a better audio card [see sig]

Floppy Drive Controller - when last did you use this? - depends what you do. I dont use it often but it is handy at times (if you arent just a gamer lol)

Regards,

N.

[un4given1]

Parallel Port: It's system standard still... You can't get rid of it yet. Businesses still use it very much.

Onboard Video: You must be looking at lowend boards if this is all you can find. It's a nice built in feature for value PCs.

Onboard Audio: Most of you probably don't have sound systems that you could tell the difference on.

Floppy Drive Controller: I agree that it should be gotten rid of. Dell has actually made this move about a year ago with some of their systems.

[tarquel]

hehe the Lord and Master

I think he's not on about all motherboard's - unless i misread what he means.

All four things are useful for businesses naturally - floppy disks are still used by alot of businesses and schools - maybe not by the end users, but admins of the system (like me) have to use them still [even tho i dont really want to - costs stop me from using better things lol]

But motherboards geared to gamers is different.

lol its all hyperthetical anyhow

Regards,

N.

[Mekrel]

Im just glad that you people dont design motherboards,

You do realise that most controllers can be turned of via the bios, so removing them is just plain stupid.

The fact some users out there may buy your board because it has those features. If you take them away thats one less sale.

As to apposed them being there and users just disabling them if not needed in the bios

Firewire Port - you always have to buy an extra card for this, unless you have an audigy 2

nope, my board has firewire, so did my old socket A DFI board.

Floppy Drive Controller - when last did you use this?

When you need to flash your motherboard/VGA card bios and backup the bios beforehand. Something you cant do with a ROM drive. Windows tools are not always reliable for flashing bios'

[albator]

I agree with Mekrel. I dont use a floppy drive on a regular basis, but I some times need that drive to flash bios or to troubleshoot Bad mbr, dos tools...

[tarquel]

I agree with Mekrel. I dont use a floppy drive on a regular basis, but I some times need that drive to flash bios or to troubleshoot Bad mbr, dos tools...

lol That was one of the things I was driving at hehe

The only thing that "could" go is a Parallel port ....

ahhh its too debate-able this lol

Keep them all like Mekrel says

Its easier for everyone then lol

Regards

N.

[Rayza]

Looks like i opened a small can of worms here...

If you look at the title of the thread, i was gearing this board towards gamers, so office users would not be interested in this board. The reason why i said to remove the devices not required was to create space on the board and then there would be no excuse not to put anything extra on ie Raid etc..

I've tested the difference between onboard audio and other sound cards during game play and the performance is noticable. I'm not concerned with audio quality 'cos most of the time the onboards dont sound any different, its purely for performance.

If you really need a floppy drive you can always use a USB Floppy drive. I've flashed many a bios with these on different manufacturers boards.

[EchoNoise]

Parallel port is a must, how else can I run my repeater station ^_^

[Zxian]

I've also read online somewhere that you can connect a simple LCD screen (the black and white kind you find on a calculator) to your parallel port and have MBM (or the like) feed the data onto that screen. Talk about the ultimate in case modding! Making your own temp screen on your case!

[tarquel]

Cool... I knew that it was possible...

If you have a /re-find the link, please post it

@Rayza:

If you look at the title of the thread, i was gearing this board towards gamers, so office users would not be interested in this board

I did try pointing it out in my earlier posts lol but never mind

I've tested the difference between onboard audio and other sound cards during game play and the performance is noticable. I'm not concerned with audio quality 'cos most of the time the onboards dont sound any different, its purely for performance.

Quite true enough, but how many onboard chipset's support EAX3 and gaming sound features like that? not that there's probably *that* many games that have EAX3 but there we go - I cant afford them all lol

It does make a difference when you use Steinberg & similar companies apps tho, as it does with my 7.1 speaker system. Of course, we're not all after audio editing etc., but games do great on a quality setup & soundcard lol

If you really need a floppy drive you can always use a USB Floppy drive. I've flashed many a bios with these on different manufacturers boards.

Quite true - although with a Shuttle machine, I had to connect up a floppy drive to the floppy connector unfortunately. Lucky in a way we didn't get 20 of them in the end lol

Regards,

N.

[Mekrel]

I've tested the difference between onboard audio and other sound cards during game play and the performance is noticable. I'm not concerned with audio quality 'cos most of the time the onboards dont sound any different, its purely for performance.

I would tend to disagree here, although having a sound card on the PCI bus does result in less clock cycles being used, the performance increase in games is not noticable.

I had a Audigy 2 in my system before I had to lend it to a mate as is onboard sound didnt work when he got a new motherboard, and in no way has my FPS rates changed or nor did I recieve any noticable lag.

This may be different on an old processor though, but I never noitced even with my old XP 2800 system

The only difference is quality, but alot of people tend to say they notice a quality improvement when they are not in the place to do so, as most people dont have the a quality speaker setup to even notice.

If you really need a floppy drive you can always use a USB Floppy drive.

Not all motherboard support boot from USB.

Although its just an idea, it would never be adopted by motherboard manufacturers.

I've also read online somewhere that you can connect a simple LCD screen (the black and white kind you find on a calculator) to your parallel port and have MBM (or the like) feed the data onto that screen. Talk about the ultimate in case modding! Making your own temp screen on your case!

I might be getting a matrix orbital for this, they do great little LCD things.