MSI Reveals its First AMD AM1 Motherboard
MSI has built its first motherboard based on the AMD AM1 platform.
MSI has announced a new Mini-ITX motherboard – the AM1I. This is the first motherboard from MSI based on the AM1 platform. It has support for AMD's socket AM1 Athlon and Sempron SoCs, which carry everything ranging from the CPU and GPU cores to the memory controller and chipset components. As such, the motherboard is really nothing more than an I/O interface for the CPU.
Aboard the motherboard you'll find a single PCI-Express x16 slot, two SATA3 ports, a single half-length Mini-PCIe port, along with slots for two DDR3 memory DIMMs.
Rear I/O connectivity is handled by a pair of legacy PS/2 ports, HDMI, DVI, VGA, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and stereo analog audio.
There was no official word on pricing, though we imagine that the MSI AM1I will be dirt-cheap, as the AM1 platform is targeted at sub-$400 computing.

I was expecting the desktop SoC/SiS craze to start with Broadwell. Looks like it started a little early.
1. Intel Socket 775
2. I wish AMD would move on more often, their platform is HORRIBLY outdated and is holding them back. Its long overdue for AM4.
However I do agree with you that since Sandy, the socket change has been mostly pointless.
AMD has had integrated northbridge since the Athlon64, 6+ years before Intel did the same with Core i5/7.
I'm guessing for southbridge integration you mean the new Atom-based Celerons/Pentiums. Not much of a choice to cut costs when competing in the SoC space against $20-40 ARM chips - there is just no budget to gouge an extra $30-50 for a separate chipset like Intel does for desktop and laptop chips.
1. Intel Socket 775
2. I wish AMD would move on more often, their platform is HORRIBLY outdated and is holding them back. Its long overdue for AM4.
However I do agree with you that since Sandy, the socket change has been mostly pointless.
AMD should be bought out by Apple they have the same delusional annoying cult fan base really and what happened to VIA. *crickets*
AMD should be bought out by Apple they have the same delusional annoying cult fan base really and what happened to VIA. *crickets*
I happen to lean towards AMD for my hardware. Just by the way.
AM3+ is just dandy -- nothing missing there. It's kinda nice to have support for 125+ CPUs
The new AMD platforms are already here: Bolton D3/4
It can only get better with Excavator cores & DDR4.
L3 Cache has simply never been a big deal for AMD. All that die-space for a 5-10% performance boost, at best. More GCN cores under a 'point-to-point' DDR4 unified (fast!) memory and HSA is the way forward for AMD.
And, AM1. Yeah, AMD !!
I've got an A6-1450 'Temash' APU that flies with an SSD. Win8 boots in 7 sec
It scores higher in Cinebench OpenGL than HD4K graphics, and it's 8w.
HA!
For HTPC uses, people can simply use HDMI sound... digital 7.1 built into all modern IGPs and GPUs.
Have you ever tried getting 1866MHz+ 32GB of RAM running on an AM3+ board?