CPU Support for recently launched CPUs

This mini-review started quite simple. I ordered Phenom II X6 microprocessors as soon as they were launched, and, when the time came to test them, realized that my socket AM3 motherboard, ASRock M3A780GXH/128M, that was used to test almost every Athlon II and Phenom II microprocessor, is not compatible with Phenom II X6. Now I need to order new socket AM3 board, but which one to get? To avoid this kind of problem in the future, before buying new motherboard I decided to research how well different motherboard manufacturers support recently released microprocessors.

For my research I used CPU support data from CPU-Upgrade.com website. The data was current as of May 16 for all motherboard manufacturers, but ECS. ECS CPU support data was validated on ECS website. At first, I looked for motherboard compatibility data with six-core Phenom IIs. Support for these Phenom II CPUs was added not only to Socket AM3, but to a certain number of Socket AM2 and AM2+ motherboards too, therefore I split results by socket type. Each row in the results table shows manufacturer name, socket type, the number of motherboards that support at least one Phenom II X6 model, total number of motherboards with this type of socket, and percentage of motherboards that support six-core Phenoms. The results are presented in the table below. Manufacturers with better CPU support are listed first.

Manufacturer	Socket	Supported motherboards	Total motherboards	% supported
Gigabyte	Socket AM2	10	62	16%
Gigabyte	Socket AM2+	36	62	58%
Gigabyte	Socket AM3	42	44	95%
ASUS	Socket AM2	0	42	0%
ASUS	Socket AM2+	10	45	22%
ASUS	Socket AM3	53	66	80%
Biostar	Socket AM2	0	34	0%
Biostar	Socket AM2+	7	53	13%
Biostar	Socket AM3	15	20	75%
ASRock	Socket AM2	0	9	0%
ASRock	Socket AM2+	5	49	10%
ASRock	Socket AM3	12	16	75%
ECS	Socket AM2	6	58	10%
ECS	Socket AM2+	0	2	0%
ECS	Socket AM3	8	15	53%
MSI	Socket AM2	0	46	0%
MSI	Socket AM2+	4	45	9%
MSI	Socket AM3	9	20	45%

As can be seen from the table, support for Phenom II X6 CPUs was added to a pretty good percentage of Gigabyte, ASUS, Biostar and ASRock motherboards. Gigabyte looks rather better than other manufacturers due to decent support for socket AM2 and AM2+ boards.

The next test involved Core i5-680 microprocessor, that was launched one week earlier than six-core Phenom II CPUs. Every socket 1156 Gigabyte and Biostar motherboard is compatible with this CPU:

Manufacturer	Socket	Supported motherboards	Total motherboards	% supported
Gigabyte	Socket 1156	45	45	100%
Biostar	Socket 1156	8	8	100%
ASRock	Socket 1156	5	10	50%
ASUS	Socket 1156	0	28	0%
ECS	Socket 1156	0	7	0%
MSI	Socket 1156	0	17	0%

ASUS, ECS and MSI motherboards are not compatible with this processor. That is very unfortunate, because the Core i5-680 comes with newer K0 core stepping, and it's not likely that the processor will work without proper BIOS update.

Finally, I looked at how good is the support for Pentium Dual-Core E5500, which was also introduced in April. The E5500 is not the fastest Pentium model, it doesn't have any new features or core stepping, so adding support for this model should be easy, right? Wrong. 42% of Gigabyte socket 775 motherboards are compatible with this CPU. The rest of manufacturers provides almost no support, or no support at all:

Manufacturer	Socket	Supported motherboards	Total motherboards	% supported
Gigabyte	Socket 775	153	365	42%
MSI	Socket 775	26	238	11%
ASRock	Socket 775	0	108	0%
ASUS	Socket 775	0	255	0%
Biostar	Socket 775	0	79	0%
ECS	Socket 775	0	158	0%

To be fair, those low percentages in the table above don't mean that the processor won't work in motherboards that don't show support for the E5500. My suspicion that the processor doesn't require BIOS update, but the manufacturers could at least validate the processor compatibility.

Now, the final results. I calculated average value for each motherboard manufacturer, and included it in the table below. As before, the manufacturer with best CPU support is listed first.

Manufacturer	Phenom II X6 (Socket AM2)	Phenom II X6 (Socket AM2+)	Phenom II X6 (Socket AM3)	Core i5-680	Pentium E5500	Average
Gigabyte	16%	58%	95%	100%	42%	62%
ASRock	0%	10%	75%	50%	0%	45%
Biostar	0%	13%	75%	100%	0%	38%
ASUS	0%	22%	80%	0%	0%	20%
MSI	0%	9%	45%	0%	11%	13%
ECS	10%	0%	53%	0%	0%	13%

Conclusion: