AMD's Kabini APU first hit the scene last May but thus far, it's only been available as a pre-soldered combination already mated to a motherboard. That'll likely change in the not too distant future, however, based on some hardware spied this past week at the Consumer Electronics Show.
During a recent visit with MSI at the show, The Tech Report was shown a mini-ITX board with a 721-pin socket ready to accept a Kabini APU. The socket M1 motherboard is said to be compatible with both dual- and quad-core chips with a TDP of up to 25 watts.
We're told that some of the APUs could use the Sempron name while others will retain the same E-series branding that we have seen on the A6-5200 mobile chip clocked at 2GHz with four Jaguar cores and built-in Radeon HD 8400 graphics ticking along at 600MHz.
The MSI board in question covers all of the basics which includes two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and DVI outputs, an Ethernet connection, two RAM slots and a full-sized PCI Express slot. Storage options include dual SATA ports and a Mini PCI Express slot that will more than likely be compatible with mSATA solid state drives.
Notably missing from the equation, however, is integrated Wi-Fi. That said, it might make more sense to use the Mini PCI Express slot for a wireless card if you won't be using a wired connection, but I digress.
The motherboard is expected to hit the market sometime in March, MSI said.