The A85x chipset
There are three different chipsets that can be used with the FM2 Socket. The A85X (Hudson D4), The A75(Hudson D3), and the A55 (Hudson D2). Some of you may recognize that both the A75 and A55 chipsets have been around for a while. The A55 is the mainstay of the Fusion APU line, for both E series and A series APU’s. The A75 was the premium desktop chipset, again capable of supporting both the E and A series APU’s. While both generally had a generous number of features. They lacked one of the most appealing features facing a APU and the gamer/enthusiast. Upgradeability when it comes to discrete graphics.
While the older A75 chipsets allowed AMD Dual Graphics capabilities with select cards. It was not capable of Crossfire. Or the necessary PCIe bandwidth to support discrete graphics cards of performance levels above the IGP’s performance level.
The A85X solves both of these problems by adding additional PCIe bandwith capable of supporting a single 16x PCIe 2.0 card, or two 8x PCIe cards.
This puts it into the same market space to compete with the Intel Socket 1155 boards. While those boards do have more overall bandwidth, their price range is generally much higher when such features are included.
Not to mention that the Intel IGP performance is vastly sub par when compared to the APU’s IGP performance.
The upgrades included in the A85X chipset are not limited purely to the PCIe and graphics department. AMD has increased the number of SATA ports available on the A85x as well, from six to eight. They also Improved the support for multiple displays when using the IGP. From dual display support to triple displays. While some A75 boards would allow triple monitor support, the support was somewhat dubious at times. There was drive from businesses and users to convince AMD that improved support was needed.
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