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AMD A55 boards go on sale in Europe

by on10 August 2011


Llanos made even more affordable
Several vendors have reportedly started shipping motherboards based on AMD’s A55 chipset in Europe. Of course, we are talking about socket FM1 boards for the latest crop of Llano APUs and they should end up somewhat cheaper than A75 boards.

Unlike A75, the A55 chipset does not support SATA 6Gbps, has no native USB 3.0 support and no FIS switching for eSATA connectivity. Other than that, it’s identical to the A75. Basically it lacks the same features Intel lacks on most of its platforms in the same price range, if that makes any sense. Vendors are free to use third party controllers on A55 boards, but that seems rather pointless as they can just got for A75 instead.

As for the pricing, it is worth noting that A75 boards retail for as little as €55, with most entry level models costing between €65 and €80. Judging by A75 pricing, vendors will have a rather hard time selling A55 boards for more than €60 or €70, depending on the feature set.

Gigabyte is the first vendor to ship A55 boards in Europe. It has two distinct models in mATX and ATX flavors, priced at €63 and €80 and the former is already available in Britain. ECS also announced A55 boards, but they are not listed yet.

A55 will obviously be a good match for upcoming entry level Llanos, offering basic Fusion support without fancy features for consumers on a tight budget who don't need all the features of A75 boards.
Last modified on 10 August 2011
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