Actual interoperability depends upon other factors, especially the availability of compatible BIOS firmware, and some PC manufacturers, such as Dell, have not provided compatible BIOS versions that allow use of socket AM2+ CPUs on their products utilizing socket AM2 motherboards, such as the Inspiron 531.

[1] The main differences between Socket AM2 and AM2+ socket processors are as follows: While technical documentation was readily available for earlier generations of AMD processor sockets, the "AM2r2 Processor Functional Data Sheet" (AMD document number 41607) has not been made publicly available.

However, the operation of AM2+ processors on AM2 motherboards will be limited to the specifications of Socket AM2 (1 GHz HyperTransport 2.0, and one power plane for both cores and the IMC).

AM2 processors do not benefit from the faster HyperTransport 3.0 and separate power planes on AM2+ motherboards.

Many manufacturers, such as Dell in the case of their Inspiron 531, have yet to (and may choose not to) release BIOS updates that would enable this compatibility.