Sapphire PURE Innovation - ATI's Chipset for the AMD Enthusiast
by Wesley Fink on July 29, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Basic Features: Sapphire PURE Innovation
| Sapphire PURE Innovation | |
| CPU Interface | Socket 939 Athlon 64 |
| Chipset | ATI RX480 Northbridge - ATI SB450 Southbridge |
| BUS Speeds | 200 to 440MHz in 1MHz Increments |
| Memory Speeds | DDR200, 266, 333, 366, 400 (433, 466, 500, 533 with Rev. E AMD) |
| PCIe Speeds | 100-200 |
| PCI/AGP | Fixed at 33/66 |
| Core Voltage | Auto, 0.8V to 1.55V in 0.025V increments PLUS .0V to 0.6V in 0.02V increments (Maximum vCore 2.15V) |
| CPU Clock Multiplier | 4x-25.5x in 0.5X increments |
| DRAM Voltage | Auto, 2.5V to 4.0V in .05V increments |
| HyperTransport Frequency | 1000MHz (1GHz) |
| HyperTransport Multiplier | Auto, 1X to 5X |
| HyperTransport Voltage | 1.22V, 1.29V, 1.39V, 1.5V |
| Xpress 200 Voltage | 1.22V, 1.29V, 1.39V, 1.5V |
| PCIe 1.2 Voltage | 1.22V, 1.29V, 1.39V, 1.5V |
| PCIe 1.8 Voltage | 1.8V, 1.9V |
| Memory Slots | Four 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered Memory to 4GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 1 PCIe x16 2 PCIe x1 2 PCI Slots |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | 4 SATA Drives by SB450 (RAID 0, 1, JBOD) 2 SATA II Drives by Sil 3132 |
| Onboard IDE/IDE RAID | Two Standard ATA133/100/66 (4 drives) |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 8 USB 2.0 ports supported by SB450 2 1394 Firewire by VIA VT6307 |
| Onboard LAN | Gigabit PCIe Ethernet by Marvel 88E8052 |
| Onboard Audio | Azalia HD Audio by Realtek ALC880 |
| BIOS Revision | Award (7/28/2005) |
The DFI nForce4 Ultra and SLI boards have quickly developed a reputation for offering the enthusiast every imaginable BIOS option. We mention the DFI only to put in perspective that the Sapphire ATI offers 2 more memory adjustments not found on the DFI and even more controls to tweak the performance of the motherboard. It is clear that ATI has worked with some leading enthusiasts in refining the Crossfire AMD - it clearly shows in the depth and breath of available options. At the other end of the spectrum, the Sapphire ATI also offers automatic overclocking options in the BIOS for those uncomfortable with manual overclocking
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QueBert - Saturday, July 30, 2005 - link
I like the white, but not a big fan of red. As for it being the "first white motherboard we've seen" There was a really sweet looking one by I believe, Epox. Platinum colored PCB with blue and gold on the board. The color scheme of this Sapphire is different, and different is good. I hate green/red PCB's.beorntheold - Saturday, July 30, 2005 - link
Under Gaming Performance:"... If you keep in mind that the orange bar represents the same NVIDIA 6800 Ultra used to test the other boards in this review, you can clearly see that the Sapphire ATI is at or near the top in most game tests..."
There is either an error in the graph or in the text - because the orange bar clearly says
nV 7800 GTX.
Olaf van der Spek - Saturday, July 30, 2005 - link
> This number is meaningless as far as hard disk performance is concerned as it is just the number of IO operations completed in a second.What exactly is meant here?
Isn't more completed operations per second better?
Wesley Fink - Saturday, July 30, 2005 - link
I meant that the operations per second is meaningless as a SPECIFICATION of hard drive performance. Yes, more operations per second is better, but you will never see iPeak ops/sec quoted as a specification.roel - Saturday, July 30, 2005 - link
And what about support for linux?Will it boot? Will it be fast as well?
I'd like to know.
roel
kevykev - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
What is with the stupid fish names though? How ridiculous.TheInvincibleMustard - Saturday, July 30, 2005 - link
Actually, that was one of the first things to catch my eye ... Not the fish, but the jaguar, with the silkscreened logo looking almost exactly the same as the automobile company (Google Images if you're curious). The actual leaping cat is positioned slightly differently between the two, but the similarity is remarkable.If I had better image manipulation on this machine I'm at, I'd whip up a side-by-side comparison to better illustrate (hehe) my point.
shoRunner - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
All i can say is drool, this definately looks like a very promising board, if they can fix the issue with the USB transfer rates(even without a fix its will still be very competative, how often do most ppl transfer huge amounts of data over USB?). What i still want to see is one of these boards with the integrate graphics and a DVI port.Stas - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Just as I expected: nVidia is whooped. ATi + AMD = PerformanceZebo - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Looks great Wes..cept for memory is to close together and not staggard and may present cooling problems between the sticks...plus the board looks like green snot, much prefer blacks, reds and blues.