AMD Fusion Mini-ITX Preview
Andy Ruffell / 14 years ago
Conclusion
[COLOR=#000000]As you can see from the specs, all the boards with the exception of the Jetway have very similar features. NAS users will be excited by the 4-6 SATA3 ports, gigabit LAN and the PCI-E interface offering plenty of bandwidth for hardware RAID or SATA expansion cards. The integrated AMD HD6000 series GPU is aimed more at the HTPC enthusiasts looking for HD media decoding and digital audio via HDMI or SPDIF. The pictures show how the cooling solutions on these boards are very low profile thanks to the low overall power consumption (ASUS even offer a large fully passive heatsink).
Ultimately with the features being so closely matched, choosing one board over another is likely to be a matter of brand loyalty and price. Early pricing details suggest the boards should retail somewhere between 120 and 150 dependant on the features. This positions them well above the low to mid range Atom ITX products and head to head with the ION powered motherboards. Given the performance and features the pricing seems fair but 100 is a psychological barrier for some buyers.
Be sure to check eTeknix for more news on pricing and fusion developments.[/COLOR]
