14 DAY TRIAL // While we are still about a month away from the official launch of the 900-series AMD chipsets for Bulldozer processors, the first motherboards built using such controllers have already appeared in price comparison engines across Europe thanks to MSI.
Right now, there are three models available which are all sold by a single German retailer with prices ranging from 80€ to 170€.
Making our way from top to bottom, the most advanced board that has appeared is called the 990FXA-GD80 which, as its name implies, is built around the 990FX chipset and the SB950 southbridge.
Once launched, the GD80 will be become MSI's flagship AMD AM3+ motherboard as it features no less than four PCI Express x16 slots with full 4-way CrossFireX and, most probably, SLI support.
In addition, the board also packs two PCI Express x1 slots, a conventional PCI slot, four USB 3.0 ports, ten USB 2.0 ports and six SATA 6Gbps connectors.
Features like Gigabit LAN and 7.1-channel audio are also standard and users also get RAID 0/1/5/10 support thanks to the SB950 chipset.
Right below the GD80 sits MSI's 990FXA-GD65 which drops two of the PCI Express x16 slots of its older brother and offers instead three PCI-E x1 slots and two legacy PCI slots.
The number of USB 3.0 ports available has been also cut back to just two (that are available via an on-board header), but, otherwise, the two mainboards pack a similar feature list.
Finally, the last motherboard model to make its appearance is the MSI G45-970A that uses the much simpler AMD 970 chipset.
This has only 16 PCI Express lanes available, which MSI has decided to route to a pair of PCI-E x16 slots.
These are seconded by two PCI-E x1 and two conventional PCI slots and the board also features four USB 3.0 ports (two available on the rear I/O), six SATA 6Gbps ports with support for RAID 0/1/5/10, and 7.1-channel sound via a Realtek ALC889 codec.
This motherboard is listed at 80€, while the MSI 990FXA-GD65 and 990FXA-GD80 retail for 125€ and 170€, respectively. (via HardwareLuxx)