SAPPHIRE PURE CROSSFIRE PC-A9RD580 MOTHERBOARD - SAPPHIRE PURE CROSSFIRE MOTHERBOARD REVIEW BENCHMARK

SAPPHIRE PURE CROSSFIRE PC-A9RD580 MOTHERBOARD - SAPPHIRE PURE CROSSFIRE MOTHERBOARD REVIEW BENCHMARK
Posted:2006-04-14 By hardware review Number of View:5942
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 we would be happy to answer for your question . if you have suggestion or comment regarding this review our support would be glad to help just join our forum and ask u will get the best answer to discuss check our forum section :-) RATE THIS REVIEW 1 2 3 4 5    / 5   View Stat

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