14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, Asus dropped a bomb shell when it announced officially that some of their AM3 motherboards are compatible with AMD's upcoming AM3+ Bulldozer chips via a simple BIOS update, a feat that AMD said time and time again that it was impossible to achieve.
To support its claims, AMD has always pointed at the different pin layouts of the two sockets, as AM3+ has one extra pin that makes inserting Bulldozer/Zambezi CPUs in AM3 motherboards impossible.
However, sources cited by the Sweclcokers website claim that the extra pin available on the socket isn't present on Zambezi processors, so the pin layout is identical to that of an ordinary AM3 CPU.
As a result, these can be installed inside regular AM3 boards and all that is required is a BIOS update so that the new processors will be recognized by the board.
From Asus' entire lineup of AM3 motherboards, the company said that only six models are compatible with AMD's upcoming processors, including the company's high-end Crosshair IV Formula and Crosshair IV models.
According to the same website, the limitation could be imposed by the fact that AM3+ CPUs place a higher power demand on the board than their AM3 counterparts.
Right now, AMD hasn't issued any official response regarding Bulldozer's compatibility with AM3 motherboards, but we will keep you up to date if such an announcement is released.
The official Asus post regarding their motherboard compatibility with Zambezi CPUs can be read here and the 3012 beta BIOS files, with support for AM3+ processors, can be downloaded from the company's FPT by following this link.
Bulldozer is AMD's next-generation high-performance CPU architecture that was designed from the ground up in order to eliminate some of the redundancies that come with traditional multi-core designs and the first Zamabezi chips (the name used for the Bulldozer desktop CPUs) are expected to arrive in June of 2011.