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Sapphire PURE Innovation - ATI's Chipset for the AMD Enthusiast
Sapphire PURE Innovation - ATI's Chipset for the AMD Enthusiast
Date: July 29th, 2005
Topic: Motherboard
Manufacturer: Sapphire
Author: Wesley Fink
 
 

ATI Reference Boards

ATI's code name for the single-GPU slot Intel board is Jaguar.


Click to enlarge.

You will see Jaguar featured on single-GPU designs for Intel Socket 775.

The Dual-GPU version for Intel was developed with the Stingray code name.


Click to enlarge.

Asus, Gigabyte, ECS, Abit, Sapphire, HIS and TUL will market Stingray as ATI Crossfire Intel.

The single GPU slot AMD solution is code-named Grouper.


Click to enlarge.

The Grouper was an ATI design for Sapphire, and the Sapphire PURE Innovation evaluated in this review is basically the Grouper design. ATI tells us that several other manufacturers may also market similar single-GPU boards with a full range of overclocking controls to the enthusiast market.

The main focus of this Part 1 is the Sapphire PI-A9RX480, which is essentially the ATI Grouper Reference Board.

The Dual-GPU version for AMD is known by the code name of Halibut.


Click to enlarge.

MSI, DFI, Gigabyte, Abit, ECS, Sapphire and TUL will market Halibut as ATI Crossfire AMD.

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52 Comments - Last by RobFDB, 1574 days ago
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PI-A9RX480 by IRQ Conflict, 1576 days ago
WOOT! been waiting a long time for this board! dissapoints me that there doesn't appear to be a version with the x300 IGP though.

Reply
by IRQ Conflict, 1575 days ago
I was just at ATI's site and they list this as the PI-A8XRX480. Someone have thier wires crossfired? ;)

Reply
mATX by dlamblin, 1575 days ago
Did I miss the mention in the article? Is this an ATX or an mATX board. I'm guessing the former, but it wouldn't be out of place to list the fact along side the rest.

Reply
RE: mATX by erwos, 1575 days ago
It's ATX. If it has more than four slots, it's too big to fit the mATX standard.

Reply
CAPS by erwos, 1575 days ago
"[AMD] Enthusiast" is written with a capital E in the article, and it should not be, since it's not a proper noun. Please fix this error, because it looks grossly unprofessional to anyone with a reasonable command of the written word.

Reply
RE: CAPS by RobFDB, 1575 days ago
Really though, get over it. It doesnt matter in the slightest if we're being honest here. Anyway back to more important matters.

I'm really happy that ATI have managed to bring a top performing board aimed at enthusiasts to market. I was also extremely impressed to see Sapphire implement 4v for the RAM. One issue that i'd like to see investigated is wether the cold boot issue that affects DFI NF4 boards using OCZ VX mem @ high voltages affects the Sapphire board too. Aside from that this is a very impressive showing from ATI. One last thing. I have a x850XT PE and i'm not sure if that can be used as a slave card when ATI bring out the R520. If so that would make a very attractive upgrade.

Reply
RE: CAPS by rjm55, 1575 days ago
The X850XT PE works fine as a slave with the X850 Master Card. In demos at Computex, ATI was showing an X850 Master with an X850XT PE slave.

Reply
RE: CAPS by Jojo7, 1575 days ago
This isn't exactly true. Ati distributed a special driver that SIMULATED crossfire. The actual cards were really just 2 identical x850xtpe's. Though, one probably had an altered bios to simulate a master card.

Read it for yourself: http://anandtech.com/weblog/default.aspx?bid=231

Reply
decent onboard audio at last! by jab98, 1575 days ago
Nice to finally see a amd64 board with decent quality onboard audio, wonder if anyone will revise their nf4 boards to support the better codcec?

Reply
RE: decent onboard audio at last! by jab98, 1575 days ago
*codec

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