A55 boards hit the European market, Llano platforms become more affordable

Several large motherboard manufacturers have started to ship out a wide variety of Socket FM1 A55 chip set boards across the European market. The A55 chip set is essentially A75 minus native USB 3.0 and SATA III 6GB/s support, which in practice makes them a lot cheaper to make and therefore a lower end price for the consumer. There is also no “FIS Switching” which would normally allow rear IO panel E-SATA connectivity.

Vendors have AMD’s permission to use third party controllers to provide USB 3.0 or SATA III support but these seems pointless when they can just make A75 boards instead. Most current A75 boards are selling at €55 and upwards to around €80 for the more deluxe ones. So since the A55 boards pack less features they will come in possibly as low as €45 and upwards. Gigabyte has already made an ATX and an mATX A55 board available to the European and British market at a price of €80 for the ATX and €63 for the mATX.