Asus M2A VM GREEN AMD 690G Micro ATX Motherboard
Normal Price:$87.99
Our Price:$63.75
Availability:Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Manufacturer: Asus
Model: M2A-VM
Binding: Electronics
Publisher: Asus
Label: Asus
Modem: None
Special Features: nv:Form Factor^microATX|Processor Interface^Socket AM2|Processors Supported^AMD Athlon 64|Processors Supported^AMD Athlon 64 FX|Processors Supported^AMD Sempron|Processors Supported^AMD Athlon 64 X2|Additional Technologies^HyperTransport Technology|Additional Technologies^AMD64|Additional Technologies^AMD Cool 'n' QuietTM Technology|Additional Technologies^AMD Live!TM Ready|Front Side Bus^1000MHz (2000 MT/s) FSB|Front Side Bus^800MHz (1600 MT/s) FSB|Northbridge^AMD 690G
Features for Asus M2A VM GREEN AMD 690G Micro ATX Motherboard:
- Support AMD Socket AM2 Athlon64 / Athlon64 FX / Athlon64 X2 / Sempron
- 4 x 240-pin DIMM, support max. 8GB DDR2 800/667/533 ECC and Non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Integrated ATI Radeon X1250-based graphics, maximum shared memory of 256 MB video memory
- 4 x Serial ATA 3Gb/s supporting RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID10
- 1 x UltraDMA 133/100
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Customer Reviews
Defaults to DVI 
2008-07-29
I bought this elsewhere. The price was about the same as Amazon. It worked fine right out of the box and I am happy with it. The reason for my comment is just a word of warning. The default video setting is DVI. So if you don't have a DVI-D connector on your monitor, it will look like the board is defective.
BTW, you don't need the $79.00 gold plated DVI cable that Circutit City sells (grrrr). My $20 cable works just fine.
Good Board - Make sure it is right for you! 
2008-06-09
Good board.
1. Not a first choice for overclocking but you can squeeze a little something out of it if you need it ;-)
2. Only ONE IDE controller, so if you want to re-use older drives, make sure that you understand that you will only be able to use TWO drives! In my case I was using SATA drives so it didn't matter.
3. Layout is good, even though it is a small board, you'll be able to use extra long video cards without bumping anything on else the mainboard.
4. Drives are pretty good, I installed Windows XP on this system, didn't need to go hunting for updates or anything like that.
5. Performance is good with the AMD 4400+, 1GB Kingston RAM, an Nvidia 7600GT (256MB) and a Seagate 160 GB SATA hard drive. Very stable. Plays Warcraft III at 1024x768 with all options set to HIGH ;-)
6. Doesn't come with a bunch of extras, just drivers Molex to SATA power cable and SATA data cable, floppy cable and IDE cable.
Looks like a nice product 
2008-05-15
DOA out of the Box. I must say that it's probably the worst type of MOBO to come DOA, ever try installing a Micro-ATX MOBO?
Everything powers up,all LED's on MOBO are green, yet no video out....
Disappointing.
Great Value and easy to install. 2008-04-28
Nothing bad to say... drivers loaded great...board has everything included other than wireless adapter. GB lan... Cheap and good... I am ordering a second one.
Bad BIOS, bad support site, bad explanations. Good HW 2007-11-20
I got this motherboard to upgrade an older computer running XP SP2 and Ubuntu 7.10 (Linux). It really just needed more RAM but the sales guy convinced me that upgrading my 3 yr old mobo made more sense than purchasing very expensive obsolete RAM. He was right, but the M2A-VM was the wrong choice, as far as ease of upgrading goes. And, make no mistake, this is not a hot rod mobo for the hardcore gaming crowd who switch system components in their sleep.
Right after booting, and before login, Ubuntu froze. After playing around for a while, I booted in XP. That kinda worked, except that the network wasn't working. Using the CD of drivers that came with the board eventually restored my network.
Ubuntu? Long story, but that doesn't work either. OK, Google a bit and it looks like I need to flash my BIOS. First of all, Google on 'ASUS Flash BIOS' and you will see everything but ASUS's website. Odd. Still, for security I prefer my updates from the manufacturer. So I go to ASUS directly and end up in their fancy looking, and very slow, website. Every time you click somewhere (in the download trees area), you wait.....
Next to the latest BIOS download it says "if you have version < 0701 don't use EZ-Flash". EZ-Flash, when applicable, lets you flash from the BIOS setup menu, using a patch download on any disk, including a USB key. Use what, then? Hmmm, not sure. Do it from Windows, it says, somewhere further down, next to _another_ flash download link. Of which there are plenty, they've had about 7 updates to my BIOS in the 8 months since March 07. Certainly, I don't have the traditional 3.5" disk to flash with, as I haven't had a floppy for ages.
OK, more looking around. On other websites,'cause Asus can't be bothered to explain themselves. Turns out they have a Asus Update Utility, on Windows, which flashes the BIOS from a downloaded BIOS patch. So I find it on their site and start to download it... at 17kb/sec on a 4.5 Mb file. Running behind on your ISP payments? Finally it's done, but the update is compressed. In a Setup.exe? A ZIP? No. They used a RAR file (which is a semi-exotic archive format, requiring a special program to read on Windows). Txs for making it easy for your customers, guys, I'm sure it saved tons of space on binary data. Why not leave it uncompressed?
After flashing from XP, Ubuntu boots and all is well.
The hardware is capable enough, but the BIOS stability and ASUS's site and explanations deserve a big fat zero star. I am somewhat, not very, familiar with hardware, but this is not an experience I would recommend. As most of you know, flashing your BIOS incorrectly can disable your hardware permanently, AKA 'bricking'. So it is worrisome unless you know exactly what you are doing.
P.S. if you are a hardware tinker jock, count my review as 4/5 - the price and the HW itself are quite good.
