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Gigabyte P67 UD3P Discontinued
I bought this motherboard several days ago and when I clicked the link in the email it showed up as deactivated. I find it odd that such a new motherboard would be discontinued so fast. The only thing I can think of is that something is wrong with them or that it's not profitiable to sell since it's so similar to the UD4... shrug.
Comments
I wouldn't jump to any hasty conclusions. Gigabyte may very well have phased out this for a newer design, but that in and of itself doesn't mean a whole lot.
After all, Gigabyte has 14 other P67 motherboards listed on their web site right now, so a little trimming up of the product line wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. There are only so many product niches you can fill after all.
New Egg shows items as discontinued automatically when they've been out of stock for a while. They don't just leave the item there saying out of stock like some sites, or worse, leave the item there looking like it's in stock, figuring that they'll get around to shipping it to you when they get it back. That's probably all it is.
While Gigabyte has 15 P67 motherboards listed on their site, 6 of them are the B2 stepping of the chipset, and those are gone. That leaves nine that they probably still make. Those nine include six that are merely B3 versions of the B2 stepping of the chipset.
From their site, it looks like the GA-P67A-UD3P-B3 and the GA-P67A-UD3R-B3 are identical except that the latter has an extra USB 3.0 chip on it, which allows for USB 3.0 on the front panel. Both have USB 3.0 on the back panel of the motherboard. I don't think it would make sense to discontinue the -UD3P in favor of the -UD3R, as most people would rather save the $5 to skip a feature that they won't use. The -UD3P offers 8 USB 2.0 back panel ports, 4 on the front panel, and two USB 3.0 on the back panel, and I'd think that would be plenty for nearly everyone.
It's also plausible that the -UD3P will be replaced by something basically identical except with an Etron USB 3.0 chip as a couple of their newer motherboards have, rather than a Renesas one, to save a couple of dollars. Renesas USB 3.0 chip has been officially certified by USB-IF for quite a while, but other chipmakers trying to get their own USB 3.0 chips certified have had great difficulty. Perhaps Gigabyte figures, whatever, it works just as well for a couple dollars cheaper, so who cares about certification?
and the x68 is right around the corner, doesnt surprise me manufacturers are starting to discontinue some of the p67's
Z68, you mean. It doesn't make sense to discontinue P67 chipset motherboards unless Intel will charge the same for Z68 as for P67, which I doubt. And even if Intel did do that, I'd rather not waste space on the back panel for monitor ports to use Intel's awful integrated graphics. SSD caching is the other new feature of Z68, but that likely won't work all that well.
Sometimes, in marketing, it isn't necessarily all about what the consumer wants.
For example, using hypothetical numbers:
Say a USB 3.0 chip costs you $0.50 (in bulk), whereas the USB 2.0 chip only costs $0.25. You drop it into your existing motherboard design, change the box to exclaim in bold letters "NEW AND IMPROVED USB 3.0 PORTS OMG", mark up the cost by $10. Consumers, in general, aren't going to care about the extra little bit of money (probably around a 2-5% price difference), mainly because if the former is discontinued, they won't have the option of the former, and even if they do, they are getting some added value for that additional cost.
So from a business standpoint, it makes perfect sense to discontinue to former item, it may cost your company slightly more in parts costs, but it significantly adds to the profit margin without affecting sales or the price point.
Same thing goes for the Z68 vs the P67. I don't think the P67 will die off entirely, but I bet most of the growth starts to slide to the Z68 direction, and many of the P67 boards will likely be discontinued. There is nothing the P67 can do that the Z68 can't do. Even if you don't want to use the on-die video, and even if the SSD caching is a joke, they are bullet points for marketing to spin, and contain the ability to add value (be it actual or perceived) to the product.
There is one assumption that I am making here though, which could likely prove me wrong. In my USB example, the 3.0 chip cost twice as much, but the price was still very small. If the P67 is $15 in bulk (I don't know actual numbers again, just hypothetically), and the Z68 ends up running $40, then that's a significant price difference, and the motherboards will reflect that, which would make the P67 remain a competitive option. For the "Real versus Perceived Value" argument I make to work, the prices have to be fairly similar, otherwise consumers will see those dollars are actually starting to add up.
There's nothing that an AMD 870 chipset can do that an AMD 890FX chipset cannot. Yet more people get a motherboard with an 870 chipset than an 890FX. (I don't have AMD's internal numbers on this, but I'd be shocked if it's not the case.) Why?
Or to go with Sandy Bridge chipsets, there's nothing an H61 chipset can do that an H67 cannot. Yet a lot of motherboards use H61 rather than H67. Why?
The answer in both cases is the same: the price tag. I'd be surprised if Intel charges meaningfully less than $40 for P67, since that's what they charged for P55. With H61 motherboards starting as low as $60, there's no way Intel is charging $40 for the chipset alone. Meanwhile, there's only one P67 motherboard on New Egg for under $115.
The entire reason to have multiple chipsets that are all subsets of what Z68 offers is so that Intel can charge more from people who want more features. That rather breaks down if Intel doesn't actually charge more for Z68. If Intel charges $20 more for Z68 than P67, and one motherboard vendor discontinues P67 in favor of Z68 planning to pass on the costs to consumers, then other motherboard vendors will be able to offer what, for most people, is functionally identical for $20 cheaper.
How many consumers are going to pay an extra $20 for a motherboard (actually, more like $30 after the various companies involved take their markup) to get a few extra features that they'll never use? A few will, and they're the ones who buy things like Gigabyte -UD5 and higher or Asus Rampage and Crosshair motherboards for no apparent reason in particular. But most won't.
And yes, Intel does charge quite a bit for most of their chipsets. The reason for this is that they can, so they've presumably had some bean counters determine how to balance processor and chipset prices (since people need both to use either) in order to maximize profits. Surely you don't think that the reason Intel paid Nvidia $1.5 billion to stop making chipsets (yeah, it's more complicated than that, but that's the real thrust of it), was so that Intel could sell their own chipsets at cost. Rather, Intel wanted to be able to charge a lot for their own chipsets without Nvidia being able to undercut them. If you want to see what the motherboards would cost without the chipset, look up the price of motherboards with G31 chipsets, which Intel used to give away for free, though I'm not sure if they still do.