Although not officially supported by AMD, abit has managed to get their AMD 770 based motherboard, the AX78, to work in CrossFire. However, it is more of an Intel P35 approach, as the primary x16 PCIe 2.0 slot runs at full speed while the second x16 slot only uses four lanes and as such has limited bandwidth.

Nonetheless, this looks like a rather interesting budget option for anyone that is looking for a cheap AM2+ compatible motherboard. It also has a single x1 PCIe slot and three PCI slots. The old SB600 Southbridge is limting the SATA connectors to a total of four, and there is also an IDE connector.

At the back, you'll find two PS/2 ports, a BIOS reset switch, optical S/PDIF out, 7.1-channel sound, four USB 2.0 ports and Gigabit Ethernet. Headers are provided for a further six USB 2.0 ports. Other features include four DDR2 memory slots, debug LED's and heatpipe cooling.

The board should retail for about €75 when it becomes available later this month.