14 DAY TRIAL // Following ASUS’ announcement yesterday, fellow Taiwanese competitor, Micro Star International also announced its AM3-ready motherboards. These motherboards are already available on the market, and some users might have taken advantage of their features and specifications already, but by using AMD's current AM2+ or AM2 processors.
However, with a simple BIOS update, these motherboards will provide support for the upcoming 45nm processors, which are built for AM3-based motherboards. The complete list of AM2+ motherboards to provide support for AM3 processors includes no less than 22 models, so there's a good chance that your recently bought mobo will also deliver the necessary support for the upcoming AMD processors.
The forthcoming 45nm-based consumer processors from AMD have been designed to provide support for both DDR2 and DDR3 memory, and are said to guarantee a better power consumption level. With them, AMD will also debut the new AM3 socket, which, unlike Intel's Core i7-supporting LGA1366, will come with backwards compatibility for AMD's current AM2 and AM2+ processors. Users will require a BIOS update in order to enable the AM3 support on their AM2+ mobo, but that is certainly an easier and more convenient alternative than having to spend money on an entirely new desktop platform.
The MSI AM3-supporting motherboard list isn't complete yet, with the Taiwanese manufacturer expected to add more models to it very soon. In addition, as you will probably notice in the picture on the left, the BIOS updates are currently in beta stage, while the final versions are likely to become available in time for the official release of AMD's new desktop processors. Currently, the list in question includes models that come built on AMD's 790FX, 790GX, 780G, 780V, 770, nForce 780 SLI and nForce 750a SLI.
The recent announcements from both ASUS and MSI come to confirm that we are about to be finally introduced to AMD's next-generation desktop processors. We still don't have the exact date for when that will happen, but there's a strong belief that they'll be made available sometime after the launch of Intel's Core i7 processors, which are set to debut come this Monday, on November 17.