ECS Jumps the Gun, Announces AM3 Phenom II-Ready Mobo

Reports are in, claiming that ECS, a leading manufacturer of computer motherboards, has just announced its first AM3 Phenom II X4 DDR3 motherboard. In this context, the company is the first to introduce a new motherboard that comes to fully support AMD's next-generation Phenom processors, known as the Phenom II. The new motherboard also comes to support the new DDR3 memory modules, thus providing for one of the highest-performance desktop platforms on the market, based on AMD's recent and future technologies.

The A790GXM-AD3 is built on AMD's 790GX chipset and is part of the company's Black Series motherboards, providing support for the yet-to-be-released 45nm Phenom II processors. Thanks to the built-in DDR3 support of the chipset, system builders and users are provided with support for up to an impressive 32GB of dual-channel DDR3 1333MHz memory. Designed as a product for technology and computer enthusiasts, the latest ECS mobo boasts the BIOS utility, M.I.B. II, which will offer a series of detailed tweaking options. Among some of the key factors that enable the board as a real overclocking tool, we should mention the 5-phase power design with unique cooling system.

Featuring the ATI Radeon HD 3300 integrated graphics core, the board provides built-in support for Microsoft DirectX 10 and also for the ATI Hybrid Graphics technology. The latter will allow gaming users to improve the performance of their systems by adding an additional ATI Radeon graphics card on one of the two x16 PCI Express 2.0 expansion slots available on the motherboard.

The rear panel of the board has been designed to provide a bunch of useful connectivity options, such as the on-board HDMI connector, supported by the HD3300 graphics core. Also, users will be able to take advantage of the integrated Easy Clear button, an accessible way to the Clear CMOS feature of the board.

No word on pricing just yet, but in order to fully take advantage of all the overclocking capabilities of the board you will have to wait until AMD finally unveils its new Phenom II processors, due to be released in early 2009.