AMD Opteron launch damaged by motherboard shortage

Resellers from North America, from Europe and from Asia have all written to the INQUIRER in the last week to complain of a scarcity of third party boards for the top-end 64-bit chips.

A US reseller told us today: "The world could really, really use an article that tries to figure out why K8 boards seem to be so very sparse. my local AMD rep desperately wants me to have the pair of 240s he's had in his desk for months, but can't seem to scrape up a board."

That picture is repeated in Europe. A Scandinavian reseller said that while processor in a box Opterons have been available for a fair while through his distributors, finding enough motherboards to complete sales is a different matter altogether.

A search on the AMD site, under "Opteron Processor recommended motherboards" ( here), doesn't yet list a motherboard for the 244 chip, which as we reported yesterday is on sale in Japan and elsewhere.

The same page lists only three Opteron motherboards recommended for the 242 - two from MSI and one from Rioworks.

A chip launch without motherboard support isn't going to boost your sales in this quarter, AMD, we'd venture to suggest. µ

* NOTE We're not saying they cannot be obtained. For example, you can get Tyan and other boards from German sites such as this one. The point is that Tyan hasn't yet entered the authorised AMD motherboard scheme, and that quantities of boards are hard to get, important if you're a reseller putting together a deal.