Here are three motherboards recommended for the AMD Phenom X4 9550 CPU.
The AMD Phenom X4 9550 processor is is a quad core processor, meaning it has four independent processors on a single chip. It includes B3 Stepping and is printed using 65nm technology (i.e., it makes use of extremely sophisticated technology to fit an incredible amount of material onto a very small space -- around 4.5 million transistors on this one chip). The chip has 2.0 GHz controller and it is, according to Techware labs, a good candidate for overclocking. As for motherboards, AMD provides a list of recommended motherboards to be used with this chip (see Resources). Here are three of them, each from a different manufacturer.
Biostar TA790GXE 128M
The Biostar TA790GXE 128M is one of the motherboards specifically recommended for use with this chip by AMD. It is based on AMD's own 790GX chipset, meaning it should provide for good compatibility with the 9550. The motherboard comes equipped with four PCI Express 2.0 (two x16 PCI and two x1) slots plus two ordinary PCI slots for additional expansion boards. The motherboard also supports DDR 1066 RAM. It also includes built-in display graphics from the AMD-owned ATI.
Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe
This motherboard actually predates the 9550 processor, but it is still listed first on AMD's list of recommended motherboards for the processor. Like the Biostar board, it is based on the AMD 790GX chipset (as are most of the boards recommended for this CPU), and it was designed for gaming, so it is quite robust. Somewhat unusually, this board also includes passive heatsinks, not only for the CPU but for the memory chips as well. The board includes four PCI Express x16 slots (when all four are in use, however, they downgrade to x8) along with two standard PCI slots. No PCI Express x1 slots are included. Also, like most boards based on this chipset, it includes ATI-based integrated graphics.
Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H
Also based on the AMD 790GX chipset, this motherboard is the only one from major motherboard manufacturer Gigabyte that is recommended by AMD for the 9550 CPU. This board supports up to four DDR 1066 RAM chips, and supports two PCI Express x16 cards (when run concurrently, they downgrade to x8). Like the other motherboards, this one also comes with integrated ATI graphics, though it does not appear to have any standard PCI slots.
Tags: 790GX chipset, based 790GX, based 790GX chipset, Express slots, this chip