Intel runs into more delays...

[crosscourt]

I worked at ViaHardware.com and was a big lover of socket 7. I used a lot of their boards with Pentium 3 and 4 cpus. One of their developers George Breese was a regular on our site and he provided patches quite a bit of the time.

[tlmiller]

I miss the days of having realistic choices.

[crosscourt]

Same here, but I miss the old days a lot.

[crosscourt]

Conroe was a great cpu and after the previous products it was quite an amazing step up. I ran the early Conroes on a Dell with a BTX design which I enjoyed greatly. BTX was never given enough credit for its design and advantages, cooling being one of them.

[tlmiller]

Eh, BTX didn't manage to differentiate itself enough from ATX to survive, and the first generation of (non-oem) products was GROSSLY inflated in price over ATX. I think the price inflation killed it for the enthusiast sector, and since it never caught on there, that killed it for all other levels.
That said, you're not wrong that it was specifically designed to improve cooling, and it did succeed at that when properly implemented.

[crosscourt]

Given a bit more time the price would have come down. I remember the prices with ATX early on and it wasnt cheap.

[tlmiller]

True, but before prices fell the underlying technology (mostly the disappearance of the northbridge thus making mobo's run SIGNIFICANTLY cooler with less power) made the improvements in BTX no longer truly needed. And thus it's chance to rule was ruined due to greed of the early suppliers.

[crosscourt]

Advantages went way beyond just cooling. Improved latency between components and better signal transmission to memory and power supply. There was also less board deflection and the design was very good for smaller cases, micro-atx in particular.

[tlmiller]

Eh, it helped with other things, but it's major claim to fame was in temperature control. And so ultimately it'll be remembered (as with many technologies) as being superior, but ruined due to the initial greed of early suppliers who believed the superiority of their product would allow it to win against a cheaper, but slightly inferior (and in this case already market entrenched), product and thus their unwillingness to market it competitively...

[crosscourt]

Just from the consumer standpoint, the BTX based Conroe system Dell had that I used was actually cheaper than the initial ATX based system. Both were inspirons but again thats based on one OEM and the retail price.