Sapphire PURE Innovation - ATI's Chipset for the AMD Enthusiast
by Wesley Fink on July 29, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
General Performance
It should come as no surprise that high performance video has little impact on Winstone performance. Whether the top ATI card, the comparable NVIDIA 6800 Ultra, or the latest NVIDIA 7800GTX, Business Winstone 2004 and Content Creation 2004 results are pretty much the same at the same CPU speed. The lone exception is the 1.5 to 2 point boost given to Business Winstone 2004 by NVIDIA video cards. We have commented on this before, but still cannot explain why NVIDIA cards perform better in Business Winstone. This is most clearly demonstrated when you compare performance of the ATI X850XT PE at 28 to the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra and 7800GTX at about 2 points higher.
PCMark 2004 appears to slightly favor ATI video cards in their performance score, while the newest PCMark 2005 seems to be the opposite - providing better results for the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra with the 7800GTX with a substantial lead in the PCMark 2005 score.
There is little to distinguish or detract from the Sapphire ATI in General Performance benchmarks. The Sapphire board is competitive with the best Socket 939 Athlon 64 boards that we have tested.
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afrost - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
One of the big things for me is that there is only passive cooling on the motherboard without the need for crazy heatpipes etc. This is really important for those of us who want to build silent computers.I'v definately picking up this board from Saphire.
Zebo - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Good point must run at lower temp than nvidia's single chipset solution which gets hot as hell when you start cranking HTT.rjm55 - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
We mentioned several times in the article that Sapphire will launch the new board in early August. Sapphire has confirmed their plans to launch around August 5. Sapphire has asked us to pass on that you will be able to buy retail PI-A9RX480 motherboards in most markets by August 15th-20th. Price will be "competetive with nForce4".Resh - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Any idea on when we will see them? I'd really like to go that route, but I can't wait forever!Wesley Fink - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Halibut (Crossfire AMD) and Stingray (Crossfire Intel) boards are ready to go to reviewers, but there are still some decisions being made at ATI. We have also seen the prototype retail boards from Gigabyte and another manufacturer. When ATI decides whether Crossfire will be now or with R520 (just a guess at events) Crossfire will roll out quickly.Resh - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Thansk Wesley. I wish they would hurry up with that decision... RAM is ordered and PSU, CPU, and X800XL will be ordered this w/e, too, so they better get the motherboards out!If you do hear something, please share it with the rest of us.
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coomar - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
wow the white pcb stands out, at least the thing is packaged wellDhaval00 - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
A week ago, AT was having fun posting such rumors... I am sure it thinks otherwise now :)./me feels like getting rid of all my nVIDIA hardware.
ukDave - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Typo on Pg8, second bottom paragraph. "ATI X350XT PE" - the '3' should be an '8' me thinks.Tommouse - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Nice board. Still undecided on the white color though.I wonder if the Zalman CNPS7700-Cu will fit :|