In fact, our price search engine is currently listing five ITX boards based on the E-350 APU, none of which are available in Germany, Austria, Great Britain or Poland. Americans aren’t much better off, either. However, Newegg at least has Gigabyte’s GA-350N in stock and the asking price is $149.
Interestingly a few retailers in Austria, Germany and Britain have an Asus mATX board in stock. The somewhat larger form factor does have its benefits, as the board packs two PCI slots, one PCIe 2.0 x1 and one PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (electrically x4). There’s also plenty of room for a passive heatsink, which is not the case with most ITX Fusion boards.
Back in early January were said that Zacate boards would be in short supply and sadly we were right. Many OES are opting for the new platform and it seems there’s simply not enough chips left for retail. Bear in mind that AMD shipped more than a million Fusion parts in December, but few if any ended up in retail. Many vendors have not even officially launched their Fusion boards yet, as they probably couldn’t deliver sufficient volumes.
Things aren’t much better in the mobile market, either. Acer is shipping a 15.6-incher, while Toshiba is selling a 10-inch netbook based on AMD’s new platform. Only a handful of retailers actually have them in stock.
We must admit that we have a soft spot for AMD’s new platform. It’s power innovative, power-efficient, cheap and quite a bit more appealing than anything Intel has to offer at the moment. Also, we’ve been waiting for AMD’s Fusion for about five years. Supply should pick up in a matter of weeks and judging by the overwhelmingly positive response to the new platform it can’t come a day too soon.