Just when the dust had settled on AMD's late-to-market Phenom quad-core CPUs, reviewed here, it appears as if another spanner has been thrown into the works.

AMD's 780G chipset, which HEXUS looked at here, provided integrated-graphics performance that was substantially higher than we'd seen before. Indeed, the multimedia/gaming advancement was such that pairing the board up with a low-power processor would make for an excellent HTPC base, we mused.

However, leveraging the best out of the chipset was accomplished via processors with fast HyperTransport links - and the Phenom X4 range seemed like a decent, if overpowering, fit.

Now, though, it transpires that 125W-rated X4s - Phenom X4 9750 and 9850 - aren't manufacturer-specified for operation in some 780G boards, although lower-wattage models are. That doesn't mean they won't work, of course, it's just that manufacturers have targetted the 780G with lower-power X4s in mind.

AMD has never made explicit claims that all of its Phenom X4s are supported in the (mainly) micro-ATX-sized 780G motherboards, but it's an inconvenient state of affairs that it could really do without, especially when system integrators are looking to shoehorn as much power into small form-factor systems as possible.

No doubt we'll see newer revisions of the 780G chipset (790GX), explicitly supporting the entire Phenom X4 range, soon enough. We note that Sapphire espouses support for 125W models with its 780G, however.