Back in January of this year, motherboard makers said Intel sales were fairly modest. Right after Intel’s DDR2 and PCIe chipsets were introduced, motherboard sales for Intel microprocessors were on a continuous downhill. However, at CES, manufacturers said they had hopes for the sales to pick up, as DDR2 and PCIe matured with prices expected to drop to reasonable altitudes.

Six months after the speculation, Intel motherboard sales in the enthusiast market are just as faltering as they were before. Even though memory makers are hopeful of the uphill DDR2 adoption trend with faster modules at lower prices, certain manufacturers confirmed that Intel board sales are indeed weak. One of the sources provided us with a rough ballpark figure and said, DFI’s motherboard sales are about 65:1 AMD to Intel motherboard ratio.

Other motherboard makers commented that they have to stock some of their inventory in their warehouses due to limited demand in the enthusiast market segment.

At first, we could blame the horrendous sales on immature DDR2 and PCIe technologies, but over the course of one-and-a-half years, even they have matured to reasonable expectations. The matter of the fact is that Intel has to release competitive microprocessors to take advantage of its chipsets, which have always been of superior quality.