MSI AM3 Motherboards Are Compatible with AM3+ Bulldozer CPUs via BIOS Update
Just a few weeks after Asus has announced that some of their AM3 motherboards are compatible with AMD's upcoming desktop processors based on the Bulldozer architecture, MSI makes a similar announcement and states that 10 of the company's present AM3 boards can support Zambezi chips after a simple BIOS update.
When Asus first made this claim, many doubted that such a thing was possible since AMD has told consumers time and time again that Bulldozer processors will require a new platform based on the 900-series chipsets.
Furthermore, AM3+ chips were supposed to have an extra pin which wouldn't make them physically compatible with regular AM3 motherboards.
However, it now seems like the extra pin that everybody, including AMD, was referring to isn't actually present on Zambezi processors and the CPU has the same pin arrangement as the current Phenom II and Athlon II chips.
Moving back to MSI's announcement, Sweclockers claims that no less than ten AM3 motherboards in the company's lineup are compatible with Bulldozer processors.
The list includes high-end models such as the 890FXA-GD70 or 890FXA-GD65, but also a few other entry-level products like the MSI 870A-G46 and MSI 880GMA-E35 and even the MSI 760GM-P33.
All these models are available right now on the market, but, unfortunately, the mentioned BIOS wasn't released yet.
At this time, we don't know if pairing a Zambezi CPU with an AM3 motherboard will affect the performance of the system or if such a configuration supports all the new features found inside AMD's Bulldozer processors.
The only thing that is certain is that SLI won't be officially supported on anything other than 900-series AMD chipsets, as Nvidia has made this pretty clear yesterday.
The first AMD Zambezi processors based on the Bulldozer architecture are expected to be launched on June 11 and they feature Turbo Core support and are Black Edition parts.
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