ASUS Announces AM3+ CPU Support for AM3 Motherboards

ASUS recently announced that a number of its AM3 based motherboards will be able to support AMD’s upcoming AM3+ Bulldozer based processors via a BIOS update. While not much of a surprise, it’s still great that existing users with one of the selected motherboards will be able to upgrade without too much hassle.

Problems may arise when it comes to the chipset however. With the new AM3+ socket, AMD will be releasing a new chipset (the series 9) to support the extra features found in the new CPU’s, such as the updated Turbo Core and various power saving functionality.

Current 890FX and 890GX based motherboards from ASUS will be able to support the upcoming Zambezi desktop processor from AMD via the update, but a full list of motherboards can be found at the source link.

What features will be missing and if the BIOS trick will maintain the same performance of a native AM3+ socket remains to be seen. It’s still a great step to maintaining a steady upgrade path instead of coughing up for both a CPU and motherboard at the same time. Memory will remain the same due to the design choice of sticking to DDR3 dual channel memory (but with a faster maximum native clock speed of 1866MHz).

ASUS will unlikely be the only provider of these forward compatible motherboards, so we’ll see what the competitors throw our way.

It’s also worth mentioning that here will be a number of AM3+ socket based motherboards utilizing series 8 chipsets, rather than the newer series 9. These boards are also listed at the source link.

ASUS, the worldwide leader in motherboard design and sales, today announced the release of the industry’s first AM3+ CPU enabled motherboard solution based on the existing AMD 8-Series Chipsets. Current owners of an AM3-based board* will make their AMD 8-Series motherboards compatible with the latest AM3+ CPUs with a simple BIOS** update from the official ASUS website.