Are motherboards becoming too complex, or is it just poor documentation?

[kranky]

Seems as though people are having far more problems with motherboards than in the past. Compared to previous generations, they support many more different technologies, and have more features onboard which adds to the complexity. And things that are supposed to work don't always work.

The documentation hasn't seemed to keep pace and it seems like a lot of details are left out. I know with my own new mobo (Asus P5GDC-V) a lot of BIOS option settings aren't even explained, and you have to figure some things out for yourself.

I tend to think that when you pack that many features into something, it's impossible to test for every possible situation that a user might face.

What do you think the biggest reason is for all the problems? Lack of detailed documentation? Poor quality? Rushing products out the door before they are ready? Lousy BIOS programming? User error? Or something else?

 

[LTC8K6]

The percentage of computer users who need to know any of that stuff is very small so mfgs don't put any emphasis on it. It is safer that way anyway. You really don't want the majority of users messing with settings in BIOS.

I usually get info on BIOS settings from the web, and I have had suprisingly little trouble and few complaints with the computers I have built.

Maybe they need to make a basic manual for most people, and a more detailed technical manual for the geeks who build their own stuff?

 

[Solutions]

Originally posted by: kranky
Lack of detailed documentation, Rushing products out the door before they are ready,

I think the recent escalation in mobo problems is probably due to the multiple new technologies that they are implementing (PCIe, SATA2, SLI, etc). It looks like all the manufacturers are rushing to get these features to consumers and don't take enough time to work out bugs and PROPERLY document their products. Example: I just spent $600 and 10 hours trying to determine why my Asus A8N-SLI wouldn't POST. According to the manual the BIOS beep codes are listed in Chapter 2.xx (or whatever). However, those codes are NO WHERE in the manual (printed or online versions.) Even Award's website gave me the WRONG decipher. The BIOS/mobo kept saying the CPU was toast and it ended up being that a RAM module was simply in the incorrect slot. I could have avoid all that BS if the freakin manufacturers knew how to document correctly.

You mentioned BIOS options not being explained. Well, I think that has been the case for quite sometime (since overclocking became fairly common atleast). But I agree that it really sucks having to guess what each option does. The lack of info from the MFG makes me wonder if they even know WTF the settings do... I mean, what would be the disadvantage of informing the consumer? It baffles me....

 

[Solutions]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6Maybe they need to make a basic manual for most people, and a more detailed technical manual for the geeks who build their own stuff?

Agreed. A Quick Start Manual for common/noobish users and a REAL Manual for those tweakers/power users out there. As it stands now Asus sends out a Quick-start manual and a run-of-the-mill standard manual that doesn't describe 1/2 of the BIOS settings.

And while it is easy enough to get a PC stable and functioning well using just the most common BIOS options, power users should still have the info handy so they can get every last bit of juice from there system. I simply doen't have the time to play with undescribed settings until I find the best benchmark scores. There is no reason why Asus shouldn't tell us what is what. If they are afraid that noobs won't be able to boot, etc because they are messing with the advanced BIOS settings then they could always keep the already present "Load Optimal Defaults".

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: kranky
Seems as though people are having far more problems with motherboards than in the past. Compared to previous generations, they support many more different technologies, and have more features onboard which adds to the complexity. And things that are supposed to work don't always work.

What do you think the biggest reason is for all the problems? Lack of detailed documentation? Poor quality? Rushing products out the door before they are ready? Lousy BIOS programming? User error? Or something else?

I would say, all of the above.

It's not always the mobo companies' fault either - the chipset/system-platform designer shares some of the responsibility too, since they also do (or should do) extensive platform design-level validation. I know that Intel does a lot of work on things in this area, AMD a bit less so, and Via and SiS, I have no idea. Via doesn't even debug their chipsets and software drivers fully before releasing them to the market, I highly doubt that they have the time or the resources to spend on any sort of extensive platform-level validation. (Yes, that was a side-hand "Via bash", from someone who owns a KT400 mobo.)

Various new technologies, like the introduction of 8x AGP, really do need the sort of real-world interoperability testing to shake the bugs out. With something like that, it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. You need to have the mobo/chipset implement it, as well as compatible cards, and then there are the power and cooling issues, which depend on the PSU and chassis used as well, which are outside the hands of the platform developer. (Although they can set guidelines for them, which Intel does.)

The same thing has been said, though, about the technology used in motherboards at each new generation - they said that about the 50Mhz FSB on 486 boards, they said that about the 100Mhz FSB used on PII boards, etc. And yet, every time, somehow the engineers manage to pull it off and make it more-or-less work, even given the extreme variability of many of the components used in the PC world. (Perhaps the real heroes in that scenario are the EDA tool vendors.)

In the case of mobo features that "don't work" - they really should work out-of-the-box, consumers expect that and shouldn't have to be beta-testers, but by the same token, ensuring that level of end-user compatibility adds to the cost, and I'm sure that most people would still be more willing to purchase a mobo for $150 rather than $200, and have to discover/work around those incompatibilities themselves. (The DM+10 SATA interface problem being a recent major one that I'm seeing mentioned here.)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Solutions

Originally posted by: LTC8K6Maybe they need to make a basic manual for most people, and a more detailed technical manual for the geeks who build their own stuff?

Agreed. A Quick Start Manual for common/noobish users and a REAL Manual for those tweakers/power users out there.

I think that my Abit BX6-r2 came with a manual that was something like 50 pages big. A bit more extensive than a single-page fold-out "quick start" manual, along with a CD with PDF "manual" on it, that is several board revisions old, because they still had some stock of the older CDs left.

Originally posted by: Solutions
And while it is easy enough to get a PC stable and functioning well using just the most common BIOS options, power users should still have the info handy so they can get every last bit of juice from there system. I simply doen't have the time to play with undescribed settings until I find the best benchmark scores. There is no reason why Asus shouldn't tell us what is what. If they are afraid that noobs won't be able to boot, etc because they are messing with the advanced BIOS settings then they could always keep the already present "Load Optimal Defaults".

I miss what was a very useful feature with my old Abit - if you set something in the BIOS that rendered your system unbootable (say, too high a CPU OC), then by force-powering-off (holding down the ATX power button to shut it off), more than twice, the system would auto-reset those settings somehow. It was a wonderful feature for OC'ers and tweakers. My current MSI KT400 board, you have to clear the CMOS and re-set all of your settings, and that requires removing two PCI cards to get at the jumper. Total PITA.

 

[Megatomic]

I'd say it's a combination of:

1. Poor BIOS coding
2. Poor documentation
3. Careless end users

 

[DAPUNISHER]

My vote is all of the above too.

 

[babyjocko]

Documentation for motherboards have improved probably by 1 million percent in the past decade. Back in the day, you almost had to know Chinese in order to make sense of the manual.

The problems that prevail today root from the user. Too many people who never should have even looked inside of a computer case are attempting to build their own computer. They don't RTFM; They don't use their heads; They just simply don't know what the f**k they are doing. Then, when they run into their inevitable problems, the first thing they do is get on a forum and ask questions, where their like builders answer -- the blind leading the blind.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: babyjocko
Documentation for motherboards have improved probably by 1 million percent in the past decade. Back in the day, you almost had to know Chinese in order to make sense of the manual.

The problems that prevail today root from the user. Too many people who never should have even looked inside of a computer case are attempting to build their own computer. They don't RTFM; They don't use their heads; They just simply don't know what the f**k they are doing. Then, when they run into their inevitable problems, the first thing they do is get on a forum and ask questions, where their like builders answer -- the blind leading the blind.

I disagree that the primary problem is the user themselves. The problem is the user is being asked to beta-test products sold on the open market because of competitive pressure, eventually leading the entire market to be in "permanent beta" phase. And when a new technology generation comes out, the first boards to support it are effectively "alpha quality" boards.
I mean, sure, I'm sure plenty of people make n00b mistakes building things, but there are enough reports from otherwise-experienced builders, that can't seem to get things to work right, or find strange incompatibilities that shouldn't exist - the tech coming out of the ovens these days is only "half-baked", if you ask me. (Ok, I had to work that one in there somewhere, my total at McD's earlier was $4.20 too.)

 

[babyjocko]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
...but there are enough reports from otherwise-experienced builders, that can't seem to get things to work right, or find strange incompatibilities that shouldn't exist

It has always been that way. In fact, it used to be MUCH worse back in the day. Back then, there was no such thing as Plug n Play or USB. And, incompatablity ruled the day. Not only did you have to configure each and every (ISA) card, but there was no such thing as IRQ sharing and only a few IRQs available. Then, you had to hope there were no memory space conflicts. There were no standards. And, that, along with sparce, poorly translated documentation made it much more difficult than it is today.

Furthermore, the industry was very young. So, what you may see today as "beta-test products sold on the open market because of competitive pressure, eventually leading the entire market to be in "permanent beta" phase" is much better today than it used to be because even though technology is rapidly developing as we speak, it is far more mature than it was a decade or more ago. A new product with new inovative technology made by a reputable, experienced manufacturer will be many times more reliable than a product with new, inovative technology made by a company that was born yesterday. Back then, everything was evolving; Every manufacturer was new; Every product was extremely inferior when compared to today's standards.

So, if you haven't done this stuff 15 years ago, then you will never know the differences between the product quality of today and yesterday. You can only go by what I or someone else who was there tells you. And, I'm telling you that product quality today is thousands of times better than it ever used to be. Therefore, 9 times out of 10, it all comes down to the end user not having the clue to get it right.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: babyjocko

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
...but there are enough reports from otherwise-experienced builders, that can't seem to get things to work right, or find strange incompatibilities that shouldn't exist

It has always been that way. In fact, it used to be MUCH worse back in the day. Back then, there was no such thing as Plug n Play or USB. And, incompatablity ruled the day. Not only did you have to configure each and every (ISA) card, but there was no such thing as IRQ sharing and only a few IRQs available. Then, you had to hope there were no memory space conflicts. There were no standards. And, that, along with sparce, poorly translated documentation made it much more difficult than it is today.

I don't know about that. Nearly every I/O card and mobo that I purchased, had a decent-sized manual with it. Sure, some of them contained rather cryptic and deplorable emulations of the english language, but generally they had plenty of diagrams so it didn't matter all that much. The thickness of the manual would generally correspond with the quality of the product, and the reputation of the mfg.

I kind of agree with you, in that there were possibly more "gotchas", in terms of wierd obscure incompatibilities that gurus with years of experience in systems-integration would know, but any new purchaser of components shouldn't need to know. However at the same time, the number of components on the market now is likely greater than before, so even though there may be fewer problems as a percentage of component models on the market, that number is still likely larger today. (But that's a bit besides the point that we were discussing.)

I kind of liked non-PnP ISA cards though, at least I had full manual control over what IRQs went where. Too bad that most PCI cards don't have a manual jumper to select which PCI INTR that a card should use; there are very few that require more than one. The way that most mobos are wired, various PCI slots have their INTRs wire-OR'ed, in a kind of staggered pattern. Given the mobos physical INTR-line mapping between PCI slots, and the ability to choose the INTR used by the device in the slot, would allow you much greater manual control over which devices physically share INTR signals, and could well alleviate the sorts of contentions that we see today. The solution to choose which PCI INTR line is mapped to what software IRQ isn't good enough, because that affects all of the devices hooked to that INTR line, and doesn't allow the devices on a per-slot basis to choose which INTR line that they are physically wired to. (There are some very ancient, likely 5v PCI cards that I've seen, that do have IRQ jumpers. Not too many though.)

Originally posted by: babyjocko
Furthermore, the industry was very young. So, what you may see today as "beta-test products sold on the open market because of competitive pressure, eventually leading the entire market to be in "permanent beta" phase" is much better today than it used to be because even though technology is rapidly developing as we speak, it is far more mature than it was a decade or more ago.

I think that you are contradicting yourself slightly. The reason that I stated that the market is in "permanent beta-test" mode, is because the products are not mature, and they do not work correctly, out of the box. How in the world is that a good thing? "New" technology does no good for me, if I can't get it to work correctly. (On the other hand, putting the name of that new technology on the mobo or component's box and marketing, can certainly help to sell new hardware. AGP 8x, anyone?)

Originally posted by: babyjocko
A new product with new inovative technology made by a reputable, experienced manufacturer will be many times more reliable than a product with new, inovative technology made by a company that was born yesterday. Back then, everything was evolving; Every manufacturer was new; Every product was extremely inferior when compared to today's standards.

Hmm. As far as technology immaturity back then, I kind of agree, but I'm not sure that I agree on quality. There used to be a lot more profit margin on components back then. Rampant cost-cutting has decreased any possible margin of added quality to nearly nothing.

Originally posted by: babyjocko
So, if you haven't done this stuff 15 years ago, then you will never know the differences between the product quality of today and yesterday. You can only go by what I or someone else who was there tells you. And, I'm telling you that product quality today is thousands of times better than it ever used to be. Therefore, 9 times out of 10, it all comes down to the end user not having the clue to get it right.

I agree that the *engineering* quality of most products is better, due to better tools, but I don't think that I agree in terms of *mfg* quality - look at most mobos back then, from "reputable" mfgs, and then look at them today. Where are the fields of tantalum caps on the board, like the days of yesteryear? Why are today's boards dying due to "bad cap" syndrome? Why are so many PSUs of the day dying, and taking components with them? (Ok, granted, power demands of modern components are definately higher, but still - if the quality of mfg of today's components were higher, or even at least equal, then we would see the requisite quality inherent in the PSUs too, and they wouldn't be blowing up.)

I remember earlier days, the days of AST computers, Leading Edge, before it was "Dell or the highway", like it seemingly is today. And those PCs back then, were built like tanks, more or less. I have a 486 server box, that weighs.. I have no idea, but a heck of a lot. It's heavier than modern full-tower "server" ATX cases are. (That's another measure of the relative quality of systems, in terms of cutting-costs - old AT-style cases were often made of far more metal on the whole, and a lot more structurally-stable and better-cooled, if a bit bland in design.)

I do agree that the engineering quality, more or less, is slightly better. Back then, it was entirely possible to buy two different "IDE" drives, and not have them work together properly on the same IDE channel. OTOH, even today, you can buy two different DIMMs, and not have them work together either, although RAM was always a touchy thing, and it was always best to match RAM if possible.

 

[kranky]

Very good and thoughtful replies!

I've considered that mobo makers might not expect the average customer to fuss with the BIOS, but I concluded that's not the case. Dell makes PCs with very limited BIOS options and I believe that's because their target customer doesn't care or want to fool with that. But the mainstream mobo manufacturers pack so many options into the BIOS, they must expect that the customer will want to use them. If no one cared, they'd save money by leaving all those features out. I know that documentation costs money, but my argument is that spending a bit more to fully document every BIOS option will save money compared to the support calls/emails they'll get because they don't describe everything.

Personally, I will devour every word in the documentation for any device. I don't want to have to experiment - I'll put in the time to study and read so I can get it right the first time. It's frustrating to see a BIOS option that says (for example) Spread Spectrum: On/Off (default: On). And that's all they say. Gee, thanks! Now what the heck is it for?

Certainly people who tweak BIOS settings need to expect that they might make mistakes and cause themselves some inconvenience but I'm not even sure that most people building a system can get it to work right out of the box without any tweaking. There's not enough explanation of things like the interplay between SATA and PATA drives, how to set up the boot disk, etc. These are fundamental, important settings that need to be understood just to get the system running, not esoteric and rarely used settings like some others.

If they fear the cost of a bigger, more complex manual, they could just make it available for download while continuing to ship the "basic" version.

Looking back at older systems, no question that configuring IRQs was a royal PITA, but at least you could do it successfully if you put in the time. I've always argued that building PCs years ago was more challenging because you'd sometimes run into problems where component A just won't play nice with component B even though it should work. Today, you have similar situations but it's not the components' fault - it's that certain motherboard options don't seem to work as designed.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: kranky
But the mainstream mobo manufacturers pack so many options into the BIOS, they must expect that the customer will want to use them. If no one cared, they'd save money by leaving all those features out. I know that documentation costs money, but my argument is that spending a bit more to fully document every BIOS option will save money compared to the support calls/emails they'll get because they don't describe everything.

Considering the size of the flash ROMs that they used for BIOSes these days, they could (should!) concievably spend some of that space on some decent documentation on BIOS options. Not just an explanation, but perhaps some examples too, and hyperlinked, like the old DOS MS QuickHelp or MS-DOS 5.0 HELP command. That data wouldn't have to remain resident in RAM either, and should compress well. Even today, there are plenty of BIOS options that if I hit 'F1' for help (as the menu instructs) the screen flashes briefly, and no help paragraph pops up at all. It's not a serious problem, most BIOS options I know what they are and what they do, but every once in a while some mfg decides to give something a different name, and then you're not really sure if that option is what you think it is or not. An example or two would really help there. Also, considering the flash memory space, would it be that hard to store a back-up copy of your well-configured BIOS settings that are normally stored in CMOS, also in the flash RAM? There would also be an additional "preset default", there would be "Load Optimal BIOS Defaults", "Load Failsafe BIOS Defaults", and the new one, "Load Custom BIOS Defaults". Would save having to re-set every option over again after clearing the CMOS. (Settings like CPU defaults perhaps should not be saved in the custom defaults, not sure.)

Originally posted by: kranky
Personally, I will devour every word in the documentation for any device. I don't want to have to experiment - I'll put in the time to study and read so I can get it right the first time. It's frustrating to see a BIOS option that says (for example) Spread Spectrum: On/Off (default: On). And that's all they say. Gee, thanks! Now what the heck is it for?

Exactly! Better in-BIOS help would help here. Why would it be so hard to hire someone to do this, to write that help info?
Or some mobo mfg's custom settings, like "Commander BIOS Enabled: Y/N?" - WTF do they mean by that? What does it really adjust? Argggg, help!

 

[friedrice]

It's pretty typical to see 1st generations of new major technologies to have problems, like a guy ahead posted. Some early SATA boards had problems, some of them didn't even work at all. New socket changes have caused problems as well. I think there has been more new technology coming out at once then ever before. Major ones like 64-bit are still fairly new, and Intel has recently releashed a new socket. PCI-Express, SATA II, and DDR II are a few somewhat not as major ones as well. nVidia finally got it's one chip solution for it's chipsets like it's been trying to do forever. And on top of it all, ATI is making chipsets now. It's getting a tad crazy.