Last month I got to spend some time with the first AMD Fusion that will hit the market in January, the Brazos platform that will go by many names: Ontario, Zecate, Brazos, AMD E-series CPUs, etc.  The platform I tested looked like this:

AMD Brazos platforms promised from at least four vendors - Processors 4

Yours won’t.  According to this story over at Xbit Labs, at least four major vendors are promising support for the AMD Fusion platforms including ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Sapphire. 

Asustek Computer, Gigabyte Technology, MicroStar International and Sapphire Technologies are committed to offer mainboards based on AMD Brazos platform with integrated C-series (Ontario, 9W) or E-series (Zacate, 18W) accelerated processing units code-named Ontario and Zacate, respectively.

As reported previously, AMD has been working with half a dozen of motherboard makers on desktop APU-based platforms in mini-ITX form-factor. As it appears, MSI decided to make its mainboard based on AMD’s first Fusion APU in micro-ATX form-factor, Gigabyte plans to release a mini-ITX motherboard, form-factors of platforms from Asus and Sapphire are unknown. Previously it was also reported that Gigabyte intends to add overclocking capabilities to its Brazos-based mainboard.


Prices onto desktop platforms featuring AMD APU and supporting input/output controllers are unknown. But based on the fact that entry-level netbooks/notebooks powered by AMD’s first APUs are projected to cost from $349, pure desktop mainboards should be priced at a significantly lower price.

This is good news for users that are interested in building their own Brazos-based system and aren’t necessary interested in off-the-shelf, prebuilt systems or notebooks/netbooks, like the one from MSI here:

AMD Brazos platforms promised from at least four vendors - Processors 6

January just keeps getting more and more exciting for technology enthusiasts as both Intel and AMD, not to mention NVIDIA, have a lot in store for us.