The AMD Kaveri mid-range APUs are soon to be launched and ASUS, not to miss a trick of any kind, has released two new motherboards that offer the FM2+ sockets and that have been designed to support the Kaveri APUs. The A88XM-A and the A55BM-A/USB3 mATX boards have other features to boost their awesome, not least of which is the fact that they are also backwards compatible with both Richland and Trinity.
The boards have PCIe 3.0, USB 3.0 and USB 3.0 Boost, ASUS 5x Protection Technology, DIGI+ VRM and the high level of ASUS focus on cooling, airflow and design. Features that you’d expect from the manufacturer that has had an utterly solid reputation in the motherboard market for years. There are few things that you can rely on in the world of tech, and ASUS happens to be one of them, especially in the realm of the motherboard.
The boards are not yet on the table in terms of when they will appear or how much they will cost, but they are not at the high end of the motherboard spectrum so I doubt they’ll be commanding the big bucks. I have also seen that the boards will need a BIOS and driver update for FM2+ parts to work properly, if at all, but I’m pretty sure that it won’t be either a mission nor a problem to do so.
And, of course, it should come as no surprise that ASUS are the first to release motherboards for AMD FM2+ APUs. In the world. So there.
Tamsin