Posted:2006-04-14 By hardware review Number of View:5930
SAPPHIRE PURE CROSSFIRE
PC-A9RD580 MOTHERBOARD - SAPPHIRE
PURE CROSSFIRE MOTHERBOARD
REVIEW BENCHMARK
By :hardware review
Posted:2006-04-14
xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source
Sapphire Pure Crossfire PC-A9RD580 motherboard
YOU all know Sapphire as one of the ATI\'s top graphic card brands. Those guys are selling a lot of ATI based graphic cards and this actually is not enough for them. They always have volumes of ATI top graphic cards but this time they wanted to get into motherboard business.
They tried to do this before, but they were not that successful. we remember them doing one of the first board based on Radeon IGP chipset, a troublesome little chap. This time Sapphire did its homework nicely.
It decided to make the special overclocking motherboards simply called "Pure" painted in a very attractive white PCB colour and to market it as an overclocker\'s board.
Sapphire Pure Crossfire
Sapphire didn\'t go overtweaking the original reference design. It took the ATI Manta motherboard, tweaked it a little bit, made a white PCB for it with a new BIOS and packed it into a fancy looking box. This is a very safe strategy as it helps you to address and solve your problems as ATI will be on it all the time. You first solve reference and then the uniform design issues.
Just like ATI\'s Manta reference RD580 motherboard, this unit has a lot of power connectors on it. It has two 12 V Molex connectors to power, for the both cards in Crossfire. As well as this, there is a eight pin voltage connector for the CPU and a standard 24 pin ATX connector. Asus A8R-32 Deluxe didn\'t have that many power connectors but ATI and Sapphire didn\'t want to take any chances with the power. You need a good PSU to make this sort of stuff work well.
Sapphire Pure Crossfire
The board has two PCIe by 16X slots and a single PCI slot. You won\'t be able to use this PCI slot if you use two X1800 XT or X1900 XTX dual cards. There is no single PCIe 1X slot. The rear panel features PS2 ports for keyboard and mouse, four USB ports, Firewire, LAN and "Azalia" compatible 5.1 analogue audio.
As it is meant for overclockers, reviewers and enthusiasts, the board has power and reset micro buttons on the board that will make your life a little bit easier. Unlike Asus\' A8R-32 Deluxe board, the Sapphire board is using RD580 Northbridge and SB450 Southbridge from ATI. It is not feature rich as Nforce Southbridge and it does the job, it even works nicely with USB devices. The board has SATA 2 support via Sil3132 chip that supports Raid 0, 1 and JBOD. You won\'t find much inside the box - there is an installation CD, manual, single SATA cable, single IDE cable, floppy cable, SPDIF in and outs bracket and a Firewire bracket. That\'s all folks.
The BIOS is super tweakable and has a huge range of options. I bet that even the most experienced will have problems to know and set them all.
Sapphire Pure Crossfire
Sapphire Pure Crossfire Benchmark
We tested a single X1900XTX card on a board while we will follow up with a Crossfire review with two X1900XTX and possibly even two mainstreams X1800GTO.
We used : Sapphire Pure Crossfire PC-A9RD580 Asus A8R-32 MVP Deluxe RD580 Athlon FX 57 2800 MHz 90 nanometre San Diego core 2x1024 MB Corsair XMS-3500LL PRO memory Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive Akasa AK128 EVO Athlon 64 cooler Akasa 650W multi rail PSU
Doom 3
1024x768
1280x1024
1600x1200
2048x1536
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
109.2
105.3
95.1
66.2
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
112.4
108.4
97.8
67.4
Doom 3 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X
1024x768
1280x1024
1600x1200
2048x1536
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
101.3
85.5
68.4
44.5
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
103.3
86.3
68.4
44.5
Far Cry
1024x768
1280x1024
1600x1200
2048x1536
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
81.70
80.26
81.14
80.35
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
85.75
84.68
85.13
83.56
Far Cry High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X
1024x768
1280x1024
1600x1200
2048x1536
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
78.98
80.69
79.59
62.51
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
84.46
84.35
82.62
62.71
Quake 4
1024x768
1280x1024
1600x1200
2048x1536
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
142.5
138.4
133.4
111.2
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
144.8
141.7
136.8
113.4
Quake 4 High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X
1024x768
1280x1024
1600x1200
2048x1536
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
137.1
128.2
116.3
89.1
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
139.4
131.8
118.1
89.4
FEAR
1024x768
1280x960
1600x1200
2048x1536
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
118
92
73
50
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
120
92
72
51
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 16X
1024x768
1280x960
1600x1200
2048x1536
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
87
67
51
35
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
88
69
51
35
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03
3DMark 03
Game2
Game3
Nature
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
18405
153.2
112.8
117.0
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
18517
153.8
112.1
117.8
CPU Test
CPU Score
CPU Test 1
CPU Test 2
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
1298
150.8
22.0
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
1331
154.1
22.7
Composite Figures 3Dmark 03
Single Texturinng
Multi Textur.
Vertex Shader
Pixel Shader 2.0
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
4338.2
9854.0
64.0
210.7
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
4338.6
9854.9
64.0
211.2
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05
3DMark 05
Game1
Game2
Game3
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
11377
47.9
33.4
58.9
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
11486
48.7
33.6
59.3
CPU Test
CPU Score
CPU Test 1
CPU Test 2
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
5732
2.6
5.6
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
6030
2.8
5.7
Composite Figures 3Dmark 05
Single Texturinng
Multi Textur.
Pixel Shader
VS /VS complex
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
5136.2
10293.6
439.0
141.6/61.8
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
5138.2
10287.7
439.0
141.7/61.8
Composite Figures 3Dmark 06
3DMark 06
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
5142
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
5144
SM2.0 Test
Score
GT1
GT2
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
2297
17.774
20.512
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
2296
17.808
20.459
HDR/SM3.0 Test
Score
HDR1
HDR2
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
2562
24.602
26.647
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
2563
24.564
26.688
CPU Test
Score
CPU1
CPU2
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
1100
0.347
0.558
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
1102
0.347
0.560
PC Mark 2004
CPU
Memory
HDD
Total
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
5166
5144
4913
5638
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
5168
5791
4880
5695
PC Mark 2005
CPU
Memory
HDD
Total
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
4043
4226
5232
4689
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
4038
4576
5223
4730
Sandra 2005
CPU
Memory
Multimedia
Asus A8R32 MVP Deluxe X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
12583
4912
26698
5701
4916
28505
Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 X1900XTX 650/1550 MHz
12563
5783
26440
5685
5823
28734
As you can see, the Sapphire Pure Crossfire RD580 based board is faster in every single test than Asus A8R-32 MVP Deluxe. Without FSAA, Doom 3 scores up to three frames per second faster while with FSAA it is a draw or one to two frames faster.
On the first three resolutions, Far Cry on Sapphire runs four frames per second faster than Asus - again something of an achievement. With FSAA, card can be even six frames faster which is indeed a lot.
Sapphire is again faster in Quake 4 and runs three frames faster, and two to three frames faster with FSAA and Aniso on.
In FEAR, with and without FSAA 4X and 16X Anisotropic, it scores up to two frames faster. Even the 3Dmarks are on Sapphire\'s side - it scores 100 points more in 3Dmark03 and the CPU test is faster on the Sapphire motherboard.
The Sapphire board clearly runs the memory faster. PCmark04 shows a massive 650 makes difference in memory test. This is the secret of this board. The HDD score is slightly slower due to the south bridge but it is an almost insignificant difference.
In PCmark05, the overall score is identical but once again the Sapphire RD580 board runs the memory 350 marks faster.
Sandra 2005 finally shows what is going on. Even the CPU scores are tight the memory runs 5783 MB/s while the Asus board can run 4916 MB/s only. This makes a difference and it makes multimedia operations faster by 2000 marks as well.
Conclusion This board is fast, good looking, reliable, tweakable and overclockable what more can you ask from the motherboard. If you get one you won\'t regret it, it is a top notch product
xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source
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