As we approach the release of AMD Trinity for Desktops, GIGABYTE show off an A85 chipset motherboard ‘UP4’ variant.
As we approach the release of AMD Trinity for Desktops, GIGABYTE show off an A85 chipset motherboard ‘UP4’ variant.
It’s been a long wait but it appears the desktop versions of AMD’s Trinity APU may soon be coming to market in relevant quantities. Today GIGABYTE have released images of the F2A85X-UP4, an motherboard based around AMD’s A85 chipset and designed for socket FM2 Trinity Desktop APUs but with high-end features present in GB’s UP4 range.
As a UP4-designated motherboard, this F2A85X will be built to GIGABYTE’s Ultra Durable 5 standard featuring including IR3550 PowIRstage ICs from International Rectifier, 2X Copper PCB and high current Ferrite Core Chokes rated up to 60A. The UD5 standard has only previously been included on Intel Z79 and Z77 models designed for overclocking, and so this hopefully augurs well for the potential of Trinity in a desktop environment.
From the images we can deduce a few features such as support for PCI-E 2.0 (not 3.0), 6 SATAIII 6Gbps ports, USB 3.0 (including Front Panel header) and SLI/Crossfire. It’s not clear if the board is capable of AMD’s Hybrid Crossfire mode, which can combine the performance of both discrete GPUs and the on-board APU graphic components, but at the very least the motherboard will allow the APU to drive up-to 3 displays via VGA, HDMI/DVI and DisplayPort.
There will be a little nomenclature clash for AMD-chipset ‘UP’ motherboards compared to Intel boards – the latter includes support for dual-Thunderbolt, a propriety Intel technology obviously not available to AMD. Lack of this feature probably won’t impact sales in the medium term given the overall lack of Thunderbolt-enabled devices, and it still isn’t clear whether the standard will have a future in mainstream computing.
No release date has yet been announced, so ‘soon’ is probably the best we can hope for. Whilst the F2A85X-UP4 is a full ATX motherboard, GIGABYTE almost certainly have similar mATX ‘boards up their proverbial sleeves.
Source: OCWorkbench
