Mbd manufacturer support for newer CPUs - your experiences?

[mapesdhs]

I was wondering how people have found the support from different motherboard makers to be in
terms of adding support for newer CPUs? Which manufacturer does the best job?

My system has an ASUS M2N32 WS Pro (AM2 board), a supposedly 'professional' motherboard
(I wanted proper PCIX support), yet its CPU support list is really woeful, eg. no support for any
Phenom II AM2+ or AM3 CPUs, or any Athlon IIs either. It cost more than 100 UKP. See:

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=mBDSvKdwaNonTlOn


By contrast, my previous system build had an Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA, an AM2 board with AGP;
it was only 35 UKP, yet Asrock continues to add the most astonishingly up to date CPU support for
the board, including all the main Phenom II quad-cores, both AM2+ and AM3. See:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/cpu.asp?Model=AM2NF3-VSTA&s=AM2


What have the rest of you found with this issue? Are Gigabyte good at adding support for newer
CPUs to existing motherboards? What about EVGA, etc.? So far I've only used ASUS and Asrock.

I did ask ASUS about this, but their response gave me the impression they really didn't care all
that much. I asked Asrock to confirm their board's AM3 support and by contrast they were very
helpful and enthusiastic, giving info I hadn't even asked for about how to update the BIOS safely
with my existing 6000+ before trying newer CPUs. What a difference...

Ian.

 

[o1die]

Asrock, asus, or msi have good bios updates, especially asus.

 

[dokk2]

Hmmm,Yes I too have noticed the less than stellar support from Asus,plus their moving of the floppy connector way down to the bottom of their mobo's..
I have always been of the opinion that all those hdd,floppy,sata,ata,and external usb and audio connections should all be along the front of the mobo,because one way or the other that is where they will be used..
As for cpu support check out the current line of mobo's from Gigabyte,their ddr2 mobo's [UD5P] support all current AMD cpu's including the latest as well as do their ddr3 mobo's,,presumably future support using the same socket will only require a bios flash ???..

 

[loneninja]

I know my Gigabyte 780G AM2+ board and Biostar 790GX AM2+ board have both done well to provide support for newer AM3 processors.

 

[mapesdhs]

Asrock, asus, or msi have good bios updates, especially asus.

I think my point was that, in this case, ASUS' support has been really lame.

ASUS does make a newer board of a similar type, the M3N Professional, which has the appropriate support
for newer AM2+/AM3 CPUs, but alas it only has one PCIX slot and the layout is not that great. Thanks for
the ref though! I'll see what I can find out about available MSI boards.


dokk2, do you know if Gigabyte makes boards with PCIX? I did try a search but couldn't find anything,
though there were many spurious results which made hunting for the desired item a little difficult.

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Ian.