AM3+ boards?

Noob question but what is the difference between a standard AM3 and AM3+ board?

Edit: Ah I see now after few google searches they are for the new Bulldozer cpu's and considering am3+ boards will be compatible with AM3 cpu's. Would love to know the answer to your question myself as was considering getting new motherboard in 2 weeks but will hold of for future proofing.
 
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A little research and AMD has said that they're hoping to release Bulldozer in june. If this is true I suspect will probably start seeing the boards mid May.
 
First gigabyte boards are available in the states at least now. They don't use the new 900 series chipset though which is what everyone is really waiting for. By the end of May is a good bet on those.
 
Some of the existing ASUS and Gigabytes are reportedly AM3+ once you update to a new bios they have released. Whether this holds true or not who knows.
 
Gigabyte GA-870A-USB3 AMD 870 AM3 Motherboard (rev.3.1) - with black socket is already available and it costs 71 pounds, but unfortunately on competitors website. Shame on you overclockers.
 
Hello,

From what I've read it appears that *Some* current AM3 boards are capable of running AM3+ CPUs with the current 8** series chipset, however this is something which the motherboard manufactures are supporting and not AMD (Like Core Unlocking I guess!). My understanding however is that the explanation of why only some mostly the more high end motherboard can be upgraded to support he new AM3 + CPUs is that they place a higher demand on the electrical components of the motherboard.

It is however possible that there might be performance disadvantages when using current boards but I'm only guessing as I have no idea on the specification of the new boards or CPUs. There are also meant to be a pin change (Extra one added) so its possible support might not be full for all new AM3+ CPUs (Maybe it will not support the CPUs with embedded GPU or something like that?). It's also possible that they might not be compatible with other future AM3+ CPUs.

So what do we know so far?

Gigabyte:

Have listed a new range of products, all of which have a "Black" CPU socket and are listed as AM3+ on their website, all motherboards are listed a Rev 3.1. These motherboard are meant to have a native am3b (AM3+) socket with the correct amount of pins, I would therefore presume they should have good future proof support. As far as I'm aware no support for any existing products or revisions pre 3.1 have been released.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/list.aspx?s=42&jid=10&p=2&v=26

These should be filtering there way down to the likes of OCUK although I have no idea if they have this rev of boards in stock yet, I can't say I've noticed anything on there website as yet saying so anyway.

Asus:

Have anounced that some of there motherboard including their flagship and popular Crosshair IV Formula are upgradable with a simple bios (Currently only Beta) upgrade.

Full details can be found here, they also list a large amount of soon to be released products which will be compatible based on current chips but labled M5 models:

http://event.asus.com/2011/mb/AM3_PLUS_Ready/

A lot of which already available from OCUK!

MSI:

Have also announced support on a few of there current models with more bios upgrades to follow with support.

Details can be found here:

http://event.msi.com/mb/am3+/

AsRock:

They are also releasing some new boards with AM3+ support most of which are R2.0 apart from the 890FX Deluxe5:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=890FX%20Deluxe5
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=890GX%20Extreme4%20R2.0
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=890GM%20Pro3%20R2.0
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=870%20Extreme3%20R2.0

I hope you find this useful :)

Michael
 
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