Asus officially announced the launch of a new series of motherboards this week, bringing their AM3-based M4 motherboards to market. The M4 Series boards are centered on the Phenom II AM3 processors in particular, supporting DDR3 at speeds up to 2000MHz. The board has several hardware features for high-performance AMD components, such as 8-phase power, delivering upwards of 91% power conversion efficiency. Asus says the board will be overclock-friendly and overclock-worthy, with a plethora of hardware configuration options available to make it so.

They've also added support for the Asus Turbo Key, an easy way to change processor clockspeed and voltage. The company has at least eight M4 models in the works, all based on either an AMD or Nvidia chipset. At the high end they have the M4N82 Deluxe, with the nForce 980a SLI chipset. At the lower end they have three boards available with integrated video, including a GeForce 8300, a Radeon HD 3200 and a Radeon HD 3300.

There aren't many AM3 boards available now, especially not high-performance boards. With more of these available, we'll be able to see firsthand how the Phenom II performs in real-world use.