ASRock Motherboards Get Support for AMD FX-Series CPUs

ASRock has just released a new series of BIOS updates for the company's AM3 and AM3+ motherboards that enable these solutions to work with the recently released AMD FX-Series processors based on the Bulldozer architecture.

The updates cover no less than 19 board models built using various chipsets, ranging from the newly released 990FX controller to some models built using the Nvidia GeForce 7025 chipset.

ASRock hasn't mentioned if all of their motherboards are able to work with eight-core AMD Bulldozer CPUs, like the FX-8150 and FX-8120, but it's expected that entry level solutions will be limited at supporting 95W chips.

The top of line motherboards for Bulldozer released by ASRock is the Fatal1ty 990FX Professional, which carries support for two-way CrossFireX and SLI setups and provides its users with a wide range of overclocking options.

AMD launched its first FX-Series processors just two days ago, and the initial processor batch is comprised of four chips, including eight, six or four computing cores.

Prices range between $245 US (178 Euros) for the top of the line FX-8150, with eight CPU cores working at a base clock speed of 3.6GHz, to $115 for the quad-core FX-4100 which also works at the same 3.6GHz base frequency (about 84 Euros).

Both in Europe and in the US, the initial retail prices are a bit higher than those recommended by AMD, but these are expected to settle once demand and supply is stabilized.

Despite the huge hype surrounding the FX-Series and the Bulldozer architecture, reviewers seem to be skeptic of AMD's success as the high-end FX-8150 lags in many cases behind the cheaper Intel Core i5-2500K.

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