With AMD rumoured to be launching their Bulldozer-based Zambezi/FX-series CPUs on June 7, we are starting to see more motherboards featuring the compatible black AM3+ socket from a variety of manufacturers. While ASUS stands by their statement of providing AM3+ support on certain existing AM3 motherboards, they will be launching a handful of motherboards, using the AMD 700 and 800-series chipsets, with true black AM3+ sockets. At the top of this list, feature-wise, we have the M5A88-V EVO, which we will be previewing today.
The M5A88-V EVO has what has become ASUS’ standard “shades of blue” colour-scheme with a mixture of grey, black and white accents on a black PCB that comes off brown thanks to the visible traces. As we have mentioned before, this motherboard features a true black AM3+ socket, which is backwards compatible with AMD’s AM3 CPUs, but will also offer full support for AMD’s upcoming Bulldozer-based processors. Let’s get to the connectivity features of this board where we have:
- 4x dual channel DDR3 slots capable of taking RAM with speeds up to 2000 MHz
- 2x PCIe 2.0 x16 physical slots (at x16 and x4) with official CrossFire support
- 1x PCIe 2.0 x1 slot
- 3x legacy PCI slots
- 5x SATA3 6.0 Gbps ports
- 1x legacy IDE and 1x legacy COM header
- 4x USB 2.0 internal headers
- …and much more (check out official product page for all specifications)
In addition to all of these features, the M5A88-V EVO also features an integrated video chipset, the Radeon HD 4250, which can take advantage of the VGA/DVI/HDMI video outputs on the back I/O panel. Rounding off this back panel we have a combo PS/2 port, 4x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, 1x IEEE 1394, 1x eSATA, 1x gigabit LAN and your usual 8 channel audio with optical SPDIF-out.
The board is not yet available for sale, but we expect it to be listed for sale well-before Bulldozer’s June launch. For more details on the M5A88-V EVO head over to the official product page on the ASUS website.
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