AMD caused quite a stir when they released the Fusion set of APU's as it gave rival competition to Intel but with support for DirectX 11. Motherboard manufacturers were keen to jump on board producing Mini-ITX based boards around the E-350 APU. Shortly after the E-350 saga, AMD released the next in the APU line-up and this included the A8-3850, shortly followed by the slightly lower spec A6-3650 which differed by giving users a fully fledged socket, opposed to an all-in-one soldered APU like the E-350 had. This gave users a bit more flexibility in terms of upgrading the APU as and when they wanted or needed to.

With the Fusion platform as a whole doing really well in the market place, and many users finding that it's a better alternative to an Atom/ION solution, a lot of brands were keen to manufacturer boards that can harness the true potential of the socket and overall platform. With this in mind, we saw the likes of the Asus F1A75-M Pro Micro ATX board, Gigabyte A75M-UD2H board and even some new contenders with the Sapphire Pure Platinum A75 motherboard and whilst these particular products offered exactly what was needed, it took up a lot of space in the process.



Link: eTeknix.com