Friday, May 20th 2011
ASRock A75-Extreme6 AMD FM1 Fusion Motherboard Pictured
ASRock just couldn't hold its rocks. The third-largest motherboard company released the first picture of its upcoming socket FM1 motherboard that supports AMD's upcoming performance A-series accelerated processing units. The ASRock A75 Extreme6 as it's called, is based on AMD's Hudson-D3 A75 single-chip chipset. With the northbridge component completely relocated to the APU die, what's left of the chipset is a little more than a southbridge. The 905-pin socket is significantly different from the 940-odd pin sockets from AMD in recent times, though its cooler retention brackets haven't essentially changed. So most AM3-supportive coolers should fit on FM1.
The FM1 socket is powered by a 10-phase VRM, it is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots for dual-channel DDR3-1866 MHz memory support; and to two of the three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots. The first two PCI-E x16 slots switch to electrical x8 when both are populated. The third slot is electrical x4, and wired to the chipset. Expect a big chop in CPU to discrete GPU latencies. Other slots include one PCI-E x1, and three PCI.
Storage connectivity includes eight internal SATA 6 Gb/s ports, two eSATA, six USB 3.0 ports (four at rear-panel, two by header). Display connectivity (remember, on-chip power GPU is the key selling point of this platform), includes DVI, HDMI 1.4a, and D-Sub. Other connectivity features include 8+2 channel HD audio, gigabit Ethernet, and FireWire. Expect this board to be out in mid-June. High resolution of the above picture can be found here.
Source:
SweClockers
The FM1 socket is powered by a 10-phase VRM, it is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots for dual-channel DDR3-1866 MHz memory support; and to two of the three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots. The first two PCI-E x16 slots switch to electrical x8 when both are populated. The third slot is electrical x4, and wired to the chipset. Expect a big chop in CPU to discrete GPU latencies. Other slots include one PCI-E x1, and three PCI.
29 Comments on ASRock A75-Extreme6 AMD FM1 Fusion Motherboard Pictured
LOL :D
When used in a propper APU configuration (= GPU portion doing its job) they're likely to be a tad slower than their corresponding Athlon II counterparts, coupled to slightly lamer version of HD555 which is what makes me wonder why we're seeing ATX-format multiple-physical-PCIe-x16-slot boards for this platform. Anybody planning to use discrete graphics is not likely to go for a CPU that can barely match the performance of three years old chips. This is where Bulldozer comes in for AMD but that still doesn't explain these overpopulated motherboards from Asrock, ECS and others.
A8-3850 is the best APU from AMD at 2,9Ghz and she has the same performance with PHENOM II X4 840 και PHENOM II X4 925 because she has not L3 CACHE !!!
A8-3850 is (4-CORE LIano +HD 6550 = APU) is better than PHENOM II X4 810 + discrete HD4350 in the same price
As I said before: perfect product for OEMs such as HP/Dell/etc. who now sell desktops with integrated graphics by truckloads, enabling Intel to clinch so unrealistically high portion of the GPU market (considering how crappy Intel's IGPs are).
As for CPU portion of the upcoming Llano alone I'm afraid there is no way that the marginally improved Athlon II with Turbo is going to compete with Sandy Bridge on even terms. According to what litte information we have seen so far even the top of the line 8-core (4-module) Bulldozer can barely compete with i7 2600K.
feature rich and high quality so when the next gen fusion comes out the board will still be good for it.
ontopic board looks cool, but I dont get the point, for that amount of space you can do much better, I thought APU was for kiosks and micro type applications or oems looking to provide great performance to the avergae user under 400$ or something
We got a month to go, 10 days till leaks start comming I guess.
lliano can give you loaads of performance on mini-itx and possibly smaller boards, the transition away from ATX and such is ongoing, I see more and more m-atx systems around, myself running micro-atx without any comprimise.
1055T and 5850 crossfire, I could easily gone sandy 2600K with 6970CF or even GTX580 sli, clocking is limited though.
1: This is good: 8 SATA ports, no IDE, no Floppy.
2: It has VGA connector, AND just in case, crossfire :) so GPU upgradeability is there.
Sorry my ignorance but, can you tell me if the GPU portion of the APU would run firestream/quadro stuff? or is it just non-pro gaming GPU? Also... will microsoft just integrate the GPU instruction set into their kernel, bringing some extra power or it will only work just as a GPU...?
the rest comes down to how fast fusion and popularity, better it is, more expensive, there is no telling really...
am2+ was really expensive till phenom II wasnt competetive (yes it was very much competetive, for about 3 months)
As for your derogatory remarks, well, whatever tickles your fancy ;)
"I can't vouch for the reputation of this website, but if this is true I'll be one of the first in line to buy this monster!"
is the opening line for the piece, lol you made my day thanks! :P