Asustek to Support Future AMD FX Bulldozer Chips on Current Mainboards

From X-bit Labs: Asustek Computer, the world's largest maker of mainboards, announced on Wednesday that select current mainboards with AM3 socket will also support next-generation AMD FX-series "Bulldozer" microprocessors after a BIOS upgrade. A similar move will likely be made by other motherboard suppliers, which will prove that current platforms can technically support Bulldozer chips.

"Asus 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," a statement by Asus reads.

At present all of Asustek's mainboards powered by AMD 890FX and AMD 890GX can support future-generation AMD FX-series "Bulldozer" central processing units (CPUs) with BIOS upgrade to beta version 3012. Going forward, Asus plans to release M5A-series of mainboards featuring AM3+ socket as well as current AMD 8-series chipset.

Officially, AMD's next-generation code-named Zambezi desktop chips come in AM3+ form-factor and are compatible with AM3+ motherboards presumably powered by AMD 9-series core-logic sets.

"When we initially set out on the path to Bulldozer we were hoping for AM3 compatibility, but further along the process we realized that we had a choice to make based on some of the features that we wanted to bring with Bulldozer. We could either provide AM3 support and lose some of the capabilities of the new Bulldozer architecture or, we could choose the AM3+ socket which would allow the Bulldozer-base Zambezi to have greater performance and capability," an official from AMD said back in mid-2010.

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