14 DAY TRIAL // The now-available Thuban six-core Phenom II X6 processors from Advanced Micro Devices are currently shipping and, naturally, motherboard makers are doing their very best to provide them with suitable platforms. ASUS seems to be putting even more effort into this endeavor than others, having even developed a dynamic overclocking technology that, the company says, is superior to AMD's Turbo Core. To show off this invention, the hardware maker and PC supplier has unwrapped its latest 8 Series motherboard, known as the M4A89TD PRO.
The M4A89TD PRO is based on the 890FX chipset and uses the full ATX form factor, which already makes it a high-end platform, likely best suited for the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition CPU. Built on the 6+2 phase power design, the motherboard has four DDR3-2000 memory slots, six SATA 6.0Gbps ports (for high-speed storage) and a pair of PCI Express x16 slots for CrossFireX setups.
Of course, the product boasts the 'regular' connectivity and I/O capabilities one has come to expect from a high-end mainboard. These include 7.1 channel audio, Gigabit Ethernet and a couple of USB 3.0 connectors. Other features comprise Express Gate instant-ON OS, the TurboV overclocking function and a built-in EPU (energy processing unit), which improves efficiency.
The arguably most important technologies that the platform was designed with are the Core Unlocker and Turbo Unlocker. The former, as its name implies, activates disabled cores on certain multi-core chips. The latter, unveiled not long ago, claims it can bring a better performance boost than the AMD Turbo Core and is compatible with all multi-core chips, not just six-core Phenoms.
Unfortunately, the company did not say when the M4A89TD PRO would start selling, nor what its price would be. Still, considering that the Phenom II X6 chips themselves are already available and ASUS' rivals already have compatible platforms on sale, it should not be long before this model also reaches stores.