Foxconn already has a winning product for the AM2 platform in the C51XEM2AA motherboard. Shipping another product for the same category seems rather strange, unless of course it is aimed for another user level. The Foxconn K8M890M2MA is only suited for low entry users, who want an affordable and stable system, without expecting a lot, at least in advanced features like overclocking and SLI.

This motherboard supports all currently sold AMD processors for the AM2 socket - Athlon 64, Athlon 64FX, Athlon 64X2. The board is built on VIA's K8M890+VT8237R-plus chipsets. Another special feature is the integrated graphics card, again from VIA, the Chrome9 IGP. Looking at the raw performance stats for all tests, the K8M890M2MA was slower than the C51XEM2AA, but in some tests, the difference was slight. While graphics performance with the built in IGP is probably the main weakness of this motherboard, considering the price, it isn't such a bad solution after all :-)

The inter grated VGA card is indeed a little disappointing, and doesn't perform as well as we would like. Its performance with 3D games is very poor. Other integrated chipsets (for example the Intel GMA950) offered much better performance with not so demanding games (NBA Live 07). On the other hand, the good news is that during playback of HD content, we noticed low CPU % load, meaning you can use it for playing back your favorite movies, even in HD format. Foxconn does provide you with the option of adding a faster, more powerful graphics card if you want to through the available PCI-E slot.

Moving on to the board itself, the overall design is good and keep in mind, this is a micro ATX forma factor design. There are 2x SATA (no SATAII support!) and 2xIDE ATA 133 connections available for HDD and optical storage devices. Several expansion slots are also available, but the required cables are not included in the retail package.

Ending our presentation, we can say that for a retail price of around US $60, we were satisfied with this motherboard. Anyone interested in buying it, shouldn't expect anything in the way of overclocking, but now that all Athlon X2 processors are very affordable, it makes for a very nice system for entry level users.