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Sapphire PURE Innovation motherboard
Taken from Hexus reviewThink of mainboards based around AMD's S939 processors. Now think of the chipsets on which they're based upon. We bet that NVIDIA and VIA would be on the top of most people's lists, and with good reason, as both companies have a well-established heritage in designing chipsets for AMD CPUs.
ATI has tried hard to break into the world of mainboard chipsets. It should do well, simply because it knows how a) to design complex chipsets for its range of VPUs and b) mainboard with integrated graphics tend to be high-volume sellers, and who better than ATI/NVIDIA to launch an all-in-one mainboard core logic?
ATI's various attempts at S939 core logic has met with muted success thus far. Without mincing words, performance hasn't always been as good as its rivals', and the feature-set has lagged behind the times. What's more, ATI core logics haven't historically overclocked well, making ATI-based mainboards something of a non-issue for the savvy, informed enthusiast.
SAPPHIRE and ATI hope that's all about to change now. SAPPHIRE's launching a S939 mainboard with all the enthusiast-orientated bells and whistles, and performance, it says, is, well, class-leading. The SAPPHIRE PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480 arrives with a lot to prove to naysayers and doubters. Let's see if it can turn S939 mainboard hierarchy upside down
Manufacturer Link
Review here
Preorder here Link
The overclocking performance of the Sapphire PURE Innovation was impressive to say the least. A 245 Clock Frequency at stock multiplier is the highest overclock that we have ever seen with this reference processor. Reaching 245 when the best boards that
we have tested did 238 and 240 is a strong indication of excellent voltage stability under stress in the Sapphire.
The overclocking performance of the Sapphire PURE Innovation was impressive to say the least. A 245 Clock Frequency at stock multiplier is the highest overclock that we have ever seen with this reference processor.
Reaching 245 when the best boards that we have tested did 238 and 240 is a strong indication of excellent voltage stability under stress in the Sapphire.
We have rarely tested a board with such incredible stability in overclocking as this Sapphire ATI.
The Sapphire ATI reached the highest overclock at stock multiplier ever achieved with our standard 4000+ processor.
Summary [in brief]
In every benchmark at stock speeds, we found the Sapphire PURE Innovation board for AMD to be fully competitive with the best motherboards that we have tested for Athlon 64 Socket 939."
"The bottom line is that this production Sapphire board will turn the head of enthusiasts. The appearance is stand-out (a white motherboard) and the performance will not need to make apologies to any Athlon 64 board on the market
Whats everyones impression on this motherboard? good enough to roll with the heavy weights such as Asus and DFI? I think it looks fantastic performance wise, and looks, but not everyone will like the white pcb,
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Originally Posted by David
(nice one Dutton btw)
