Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-AM2RD580

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/09/23/sapphire_pure_pc_am2rd580/1.html

 

It doesnt look to bad, but wonder if theres going to be a Core 2 duo board

Sam

 

I've always loved the look of Sapphire boards, but for a few FPS in games I doubt many people are going to be willing to sacrifice the possible CPU performance of a Conroe system for this.

If they bring this over to the Intel platform I'll consider getting it instead of the Asus board I'm looking at atm for my Vista machine.

 

The board looks very nice for an AM2 board although I think just having red and white colours on the board would have been better.

I do think that comparing Intel C2D 975X boards to AM2 boards is like eggs to...ummm bacon or something like that

 

they are white and sexy!!!!

 

Very nice looking board, but it's just that there seems to be a lack of expansion room. It really is true that the board is "95% there", another 5%, and a good 10% price drop, and I'm all for it.

 

Because the 975X boards represent what you can buy on C2D that has CrossFire. The X6800 and FX62 coupled with X1900s offer the fastest on both platforms at this current time (considering general non existence on the street and our labs of the x1950 master card).

Sam: seriously doubt there will be an Intel board unless it's based on ATIs RD600. Sapphire don't make boards featuring any other chipset and since AMD own ATI...

I appreciate people relating to and understanding what Tim and I have written. It took a while to get the right words to convey our feelings properly on it.

 

Actually. MSI DOES have CF working on a 965 board, so C2D + CF is possible on more than just those 975X boards...

 

This is rare but great for people who are learning and attempting to get the most from their systems.

However, 2 PCI-e 16x & 1 PCI slot especially when: "The single PCI slot is lost when using a dual slot cooler on the second video card in a CrossFire configuration". Why not make it micro-atx then? - I'd expect that on m-atx but (for me) the whole reason to go with the bigger board is for more expansion.

 

Yea but we havent tested that yet

 

you can do CrossFire on the DQ6 and P5B too, afaik

 

i dont like the look at the board at all and for the price i think it sucks eggs big time me no like.

 

too bad the ONLY pci slot on the board is rendered useless by being directly under an X16 slot.

 

just an FYI on a slight addendum made to the review...

Sapphire sent us a production class board after we reported the problems with F10 save & exit and CMOS reset on our board, since the board we reviewed was apparently "an early sample" and thus wasn't production grade hardware.

The production grade board fixed the problems with F10 and CMOS reset and Sapphire has assured us that the problem was specific to the board we had tested originally. This update has taken longer than anticipated due to a number of unforeseen circumstances and several high-profile product launches in November. However, having spent some time with the board this weekend, I can say that the problems I highlighted are no longer an issue.

 

I think it's appaling that you were asked to review a non production board. I thought Bit-tech normally take steps to ensure this doesn't happen?

 

We go as far as humanely possible to review production grade motherboards because things can change in final revisions before production - anything labelled 'first look' or 'preview' is pre-agreed as pre-production hardware and sent in a brown box. Unfortunately this one slipped through the loop and we've put the necessary processes in place to prevent it from happening again.