AMD has officially launched the 890GX chipset and vendors are showing the first boards at Cebit. Moreover, Asus' motherboards are already shipping in Europe at rather reasonable prices.

The 890GX offers HD4290 integrated graphics, probably the fastest IGP on the market, but more importantly, thanks to the new SB800 southbridge series, it delivers SATA 6Gbps support as well as USB 3.0. We already wrote about the 890GX on numerous occasions, so we won't bore you with the specs once again.

However, retailers have started listing and shipping the new boards and the pricing is probably the most interesting 890GX fact. Some boards are listed at just over €100 and prices should drop a bit soon as they become widely available. Hence, consumers will probably be able to buy them in the €85 to €95 range, which sounds like a stunning deal for a future proof board with USB 3.0, SATA 6Gbps and enough graphics muscle for some casual gaming and dual-stream HD decoding.

Moreover, AMD's low end and mid range CPU lineup is quite good, too. A cacheless quad-core Athlon II 620 is available for just €75, while a dual-core Phenom II 550BE at 3.1GHz will set you back just over €60. Although it still can't keep up with Intel in the high end segment, AMD now sounds like a better choice in the sensible mid range and low end markets.