14 DAY TRIAL // ASUSTeK Computer, better known as Asus, has just announced the release of a line of mainboards aimed at the upcoming next generation of AMD processors which will use the AM2+ socket. The new generation of Asus mainboards comes after a long collaboration with the central processing units manufacturer AMD in order to offer users the best possible experience, performance and stability.
"As we have strived to be number one in providing the best quality, service and innovation to customers, ASUS gives the world the first motherboard, the M2A-VM, which is compatible with the latest AMD AM2+ CPU." said Joe Hsieh, ASUS Vice President of motherboard business department, who was cited in the company's press release concerning the new product family. Even if AMD processors to support and use the new AM2+ socket are not readily available on the market, because the two sockets AM2 and AM2+ are compatible, the new Asus mainboards can accommodate all AMD CPUs which are using the older socket: AMD Athlon64, Athlon64 FX, Athlon64 X2 and Sempron.
The M2A-VM is the first Asus mainboard from the new generation and it is centered around the AMD 690 northbridge and the ATI SB 600 southbrigde, supporting AMD's specific data transfer method, the HyperTransport with speed of 1600 or 2000MT/s. At the random access memory department, the new Asus mainboard comes equipped with 4 slots for DDR2 memory modules offering support for 8Gb of RAM running at a maximum frequency of 800MHz. As an entry level mainboard, the M2A-VM comes with an integrated graphics solution based on the ATI Radeon X1250 graphics processing unit.
Apart from the entry level model it is rumored that all the Asus AM2+ mainboards will support multi graphics cards setups like Nvidia SLI and ATI CrossFire as well as a variable number of Serial and Parallel ATA ports, while for external storage connectivity eSATA ports will be available. From the M2A-VM and upward, all mainboards will support RAID disk configurations with the following setups: RAID 0, RAID 1,RAID10. On the software department, a number of BIOS features and enhancements will be available, allowing users to configure and overclock their systems for maximum stability and performance.