Register Hardware

Original URL: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/11/05/asus_spills_amd_7_series_chipset_beans/

Asus spills AMD 7-series chipset beans

By Tony Smith
Published Monday 5th November 2007 11:20 GMT

Asus has jumped the gun on AMD's 7-series chipset announcement by unveiling today a pair of motherboards based on two of the as-yet-unannounced product family.

This morning, Asus posted details of its M3A32-MVP Deluxe and M3A mobos on its website. The first board, which will also be made available in a version with Asus' integrated Wi-Fi access point technology, will be based on the 790FX chipset.

According to Asus, that means it will be able to deliver support for 1066MHz DDR 2 memory - with a Socket AM2+ Phenom processor, that is - and four PCI Express 2.0 x8 slots. The chipset is based around a HyperTransport 3 bus capable of 5200 million transfers per second (MT/s).

Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe mobo
Asus' M3A32-MVP: based on AMD's unannounced 790FX chipset

Overclockers will find the board's heatpipe rig for memory modules, Asus claimed. They'll also appreciate the mobo's Precision Tweaker 2 overclocking software, which can "provide 0.02V per step adjustments to the northbridge voltage, southbridge voltage, and the DRAM voltage".

The 790FX chip connects to AMD's standard SB600 I/O part, which contributes to the six 3Gb/s SATA ports and one eSATA connector the M3A32-MVP Deluxe offers. The board also provides eight-channel HD audio and Gigabit Ethernet.

The second board, the M3A, uses AMD's 770 chip and, again, the SB600. This board can also handle 1066MHz DDR 2 memory if a Socket AM2+ CPU is used - 533MHz or 800MHz otherwise - but only provides a single x16 PCIe 2.0 slot. It can also host four 3Gb/s SATA devices.

Asus' announcement confirms details of the 790FX - codenamed 'RD790' - that motherboard maker MSI let slip last month when it prematurely unveiled the K9A2 Platinum (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/10/msi_reveals_rd790_board/) mobo.

The RD790, which won PCI SIG approval back in April (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/04/02/amd_rd690_confirmed/), is expected to form part of AMD's upcoming 'Spider' gaming platform (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/26/amd_to_show_spider/), which combines the chipset with the RV670 graphics card AMD has already said will launch mid-November and quad-core Phenom CPUs.

The 65nm RD790 is also expected to support a three-card version of CrossFire (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/07/09/ati_rd790_details/).

Details about the 790FX and its RD790 foundation have been doing the rounds for some time, but the low-end 770, mentioned for the first time by Asus, is new to us. Can we also expect a 780 when the chipset launches later this month?