Sapphire PURE Innovation

Sapphire will release the first in their new PURE motherboard series around August 5th. The top enthusiast board, based on the Grouper Reference Board, will be the PURE Innovation. This is based on the discrete video version of the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset for AMD Athlon 64 Socket 939. There will also be another version based on the RS480 integrated graphics version of the same chipset.

Sapphire and ATI have done an outstanding job of making the PURE ATI board stand out. This starts with silver foil Sapphire packaging...

...to the board window behind the outside flap...

...to the standout white motherboard with red lettering.


Click to enlarge.

A white board in a window case with UV lighting should have the attention of those who like to show off their computer guts in a window case. This is certainly the first white motherboard that we have seen, and it is just another example of how Sapphire and ATI are out to get the attention of the AMD enthusiast. There is a lot to like that stands out in the appearance of the Sapphire, but most will be even more interested in the options available and how the board actually performs.

ATI Reference Boards Basic Features: Sapphire PURE Innovation
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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 = Performance
  • Zebo - 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.

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