Sapphire PURE Innovation - ATI's Chipset for the AMD Enthusiast
by Wesley Fink on July 29, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gaming Performance
If you keep in mind that the orange bar represents the same NVIDIA 6800 Ultra used to test the other boards in this review, you can clearly see that the Sapphire ATI is at or near the top in most game tests. The Sapphire ATI chipset performs at least as fast as the best of nForce4 chipset boards. This is a significant accomplishment for ATI, since there are no glaring performance weaknesses that would tilt the buying decision to a competitor's board.
You can also see that the Sapphire ATI performs very well when driving an NVIDIA 7800GTX video card. You may be surprised to see such a relatively small advantage for the 7800GTX in many of our gaming benchmarks, but that is a result of screen resolution. We run all benchmarks at 1280x1024, which is the highest resolution available on the most used 19" and smaller flat panels. The 7800GTX pulls away only when all the eye candy is turned on or at even higher resolutions. The point of this is that unless you have a 20" or larger LCD (or you're happy with a high-res CRT), the 7800GTX may be a wasted expense that will bring you little additional performance for what the added cost.
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somu - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
only thing that i would like to know is the pricing, since its on par performance wise with the other entusiast boards, the one thing that will seperate itself will be pricing.L3p3rM355i4h - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
WTF, these aren't bartons! Props to ATi for including something that high. 4.0vdimm is good too.The white PCB is....interesting, to say the least. Just going to leave it at that. ;)
If these are actually out in Mid-October/Nov. I'm def. going to get one.
L3p3rM355i4h - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
WTF, these aren't bartons! Props to ATi for including something that high. 4.0vdimm is good too.The white PCB is....interesting, to say the least. Just going to leave it at that. ;)
If these are actually out in Mid-October/Nov. I'm def. going to get one.
erinlegault - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
I am impressed to say the least. IGP versions will be coming along with Crossfire versions. There are 4 different flavours coming and 8 if you count the addition of IGP. This may lead to a breakthrough into the OEM's. The true test will be how the intel chipset performs.Excellent job ATI!
Quiksel - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
That white mobo is supa hot. When I saw that pic, my jaw dropped. PRETTY MOBO.Too bad I'm an all-Mac shop now. I need a mobo like this in my G4. :-P
Chef Brian - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
I wanted to buy this mobo when I saw the awesome colours, but the featureset sealed the deal. If this board can overclock like it should, I will buy it without any further question. This has massive potential..fitten - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Just think.... now if they just had a TypeR sticker on it somewhere... :rolleyes:xsilver - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
is there any mention of the price? Competitive performance at a non competitive price still means little for ATIand also the limited availability (ala rs480) might also kill some of this products hopes
hopefully though they will make a spash and give nvidia a kick in the pants to lower their prices :)
jab98 - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Nice to finally see a amd64 board with decent quality onboard audio, wonder if anyone will revise their nf4 boards to support the better codcec?Zebo - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
I guess you missed the MSI with on-board SBlive?