A55 boards hit the European market, Llano platforms become more affordable
Ryan Martin / 13 years ago
Several large motherboard manufacturers have started to ship out a wide variety of Socket FM1 A55 chip set boards across the European market. The A55 chip set is essentially A75 minus native USB 3.0 and SATA III 6GB/s support, which in practice makes them a lot cheaper to make and therefore a lower end price for the consumer. There is also no “FIS Switching” which would normally allow rear IO panel E-SATA connectivity.
Vendors have AMD’s permission to use third party controllers to provide USB 3.0 or SATA III support but these seems pointless when they can just make A75 boards instead. Most current A75 boards are selling at 55 and upwards to around 80 for the more deluxe ones. So since the A55 boards pack less features they will come in possibly as low as 45 and upwards. Gigabyte has already made an ATX and an mATX A55 board available to the European and British market at a price of 80 for the ATX and 63 for the mATX.
