AMD Preps am3 motherboard lineup.

[chew*]

Now if any tier 1 companies want to make a winner here's what they need to do.

4 usb back I/O, ditch the onboard graphics, 1 1394 fire wire will suffice I/O not necessary.

Additonal USB with todays USB devices a total of 10 total is not absurd

Ditch 1 IDE and Floppy connections *EDIT* 1 IDE Would be necessary to keep customers with existing quality peripherals.

Make the cpu socket clear of obstructions. *edit* optional mounting holes for optional orientation of aftermarket cooling.

Beef up the power scheme.*Edit* quality passive cooling all around

*edit* clean power, if you need an example - reference ati manta or grouper which i'm sure can even be improved upon.

6 or more sata mounted sideways off the edge of the board.

Make sure that installing ram is not impeded by having a card installed in PCI X 1.
*EDIT* Make sure ram is spaced taking oversized coolers in mind so that taller ram modules can be used without interference

*EDIT* Gigabyte lan

Plenty of PCI E slots, 1 additional x16 PCI X slot with as much space as possible between the 2 x16PCI X slots, and if they feel the need to use a regular PCI slot stick it at the bottom. *Edit* Ensuring that at least one PCI and PCIe slot will not be blocked when using 2 Dual slot vid cards.

Well placed auxillary power connectors

Stay away from the bold colors, a black board with white slots would work wonders or even all black or white with black slots.

I would personally ditch ps/2 connections. who uses a ps2 mouse or keyboard anymore.......*edit* 1 Ps/2 for keyboard may be necessary as USB still has some issues especially for new installs, acess to bios and wake from KB.

Power and reset buttons built onto the motherboard!!!!!!!!!!! very little space and cost.......

If asus is reading this an OC palm!!!!!!!!!!!

Azalia audio is ok, most will have they're own soundcard.

!!!*EDIT*!!! Tweaking/OC options, These are a must for a enthusiast board, manta reference and DFI NF4 Ultra D ( although I hated it ) would be a good guide of what offered great tweaking/OC options............IMHO a good board will survive the utmost abuse and is more than capable of killing a cpu if used wrong.............IF you can't kill a cpu then you aren't pushing the max limits of a CPU....
Have i missed anything.