X-bit labs

Started by: aku | Date 09/02/05

Comments: 20 | Last Comment:  08/05/07

[1-15]

1. According to http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2481&p=5 the board's SIL 3132 does support the so-called "SATA II" features, and has excellent performance also when using those two ports.

IMO Sapphire looks almost perfect board with the exception of USB performance.

SB450 South Bridge doesn’t support SATA II. There are only two ports supporting this interface and they are implemented via external SiI3132 controller. As for the performance, the SATA controller of the nForce4 proves faster in real applications even though the results of synthetic tests suggest different outcome.

All in all, Sapphire mainboard is not any better than nForce4 based overclocker’s mainboards. It is just much more expensive. That’s all.

Yes, the expensiveness seems quite a big low point - we will have to see what the street price will be.

For myself, I hate nForce4-boards because of their chipset fans, but of course for many people the noise doesn't matter that much.

2. The only other "low" that should be re-emphasized is the use of TEAPO brand capacitors.

How come that's not counted as a "low"?

Capacitor failure when overclocking only shows the company tried to save a buck with an inferior solution.

Abit, ASUS, DFI, etc, etc use capacitor brands that are well known for reliability. Heck, my really old ASUS dual CPU PIII mobo uses Rubycon ones. (Even my Server PSU uses the same!)

It would be good if Sapphire do the same, if they want to be taken more seriously by enthusiasts.

Current Pure Innovation board have top quality capacitors, and lots of them.
It seems ATIi forced Sapphire to change the capacitors to high quality, no need to worry about that anymore.

I've got the PI-A9RX480 and I'm quite satisfied with it, the only bad thing to note is the USB transfer speeds so if you've got a DV camera that uses USB you might want to look for a different board or wait those extra seconds. Also this board is for overclockers and you need to use it for that in order for it to really shine.

If I'd use one word to describe it it would be overkill. The board has three 3.3F capacitors and two 2.2F capacitors - And that's just for the voltage regulator circuitry for the memory modules! By the processors voltage regulator circuitry there's seven 3.3F capacitors and a few smaller ones that I cannot read due to the cpu heatsink.

3. Will first off let me say you buy's do a good job with your reviews . But isn't it a possiablity that the Cpu failed and took out the motherboard . AMD"s are infact none to die under O/C. AT most forums YOU WILL READ HELP MY CPU DIED. 9 out of ten are AMD. and considering that 8 out of 10 cpu's out their are intell. Thats an alarming rate of CPU failures for AMD.

4. known to die . excuse my keyboard.

5. in our lab has died 3800+ newcastle in this "pure inovation" :) we had not tested the board after, because we don`t wanna kill another CPU

6. great read - we need both the uli & ati boards tokeep all the players honest.

7. Looking from the pictures, it seems they have dropped serial and paraller ports. I think that's progress at last... and surely part of their "innovation" theme. Even though those parts don't cost anything, I've personally always thought that it's stupid to waste space for such old things. The look of the board seems cleaner now.

HD audio rocks over AC97!! I think I'll purchase this one regardless of the price.

Agreed, those old ports are mostly usefull when droped to leave space for newer connectors... ;)

8. Well dudes what can I say... it's got a high-end price so comparing to many high-end nVidia mobos:

- the cons are twice as much;

- the goods are almost irrelevant except for passive cooling (if any high-end user will use a mobo for longer then the expected lifetime of a active cooler anyway...)

Abusers won't be able to use all the available OC range since some components won't keep up or will just melt their chocolates.

But hey, that white PCB is "snow cool" awesome! Luvd it!

At the end, adopting mid-end prices would give it great value.

9. nf4 better

10. This is the only way we'll get any sunshine for the daisies!!

11. let me know when ati enables crossfire for the IGP... i'd like to be able to just stick in a x1300 and play the next wave of games for under $100

(IGP + x1300 = crossfire)

F*CK... wrong window.... wrong article.. wrong comment

12. Hopefully this is only the 1st step for ATI to
offer some real competition to Nvidia.

13. het is mooi als je een dubbele prosseor kan gebruiken, dan kan je op een je OS laten lopen en op de andere Bijv: een spel of muziek progamma. je moet hiervoor we de gepaste soft-ware hebben.

14. i'd like to know about this onboard HD ALC880 audio card. How does it's sound quality compare to professional audio-production types of cards. Does it have it's own ASIO drivers?

15. I'm want search one driver of Mainboar Mode ATI SB450

[1-15]