Sapphire PURE Innovation - ATI's Chipset for the AMD Enthusiast
by Wesley Fink on July 29, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Overclocking: Sapphire PURE Innovation
| Sapphire PURE Innovation | |
| Overclocking Testbed | |
| Processor: | Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz, 1MB Cache) |
| CPU Voltage: | 1.525V (default 1.50V) |
| Cooling: | Thermaltake Silent Boost K8 Heatsink/Fan |
| Power Supply: | OCZ Power Stream 520W |
| Memory: | OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 (Samsung TCCD Memory Chips) |
| Hard Drive: | Seagate 120GB 7200RPM SATA 8MB Cache |
| Maximum OC: (Standard Ratio) |
245x12 (4x HT, 2.5-3-3-10) 2940MHz (+22.5%) |
| Maximum FSB: (Lower Ratio) |
302 x 9 (3x HT, 1T) (2718MHz, 2 DIMMs in DC mode) (+51% Bus Overclock) |
We have rarely tested a board with such incredible stability in overclocking as this Sapphire ATI. It was not always easy to reach our desired overclock with all of the exceptional range of options available in BIOS, but once we reached the overclock, it was extremely stable. We did notice that the Sapphire ATI responds best to gradual increases in overclocking - it does not like, for example, to be set directly to 245 clock frequency. It will reach higher overclocks if the Clock frequency is increased gradually instead of in one fell swoop.
The Sapphire ATI reached a new record with our standard 4000+ Clawhammer. The highest previous overclock at stock multiplier was 242, but the Grouper went on to a stable 245. This would be quite an accomplishment for any board, but it is remarkable for a first production board. The 302 Maximum bus frequency was also a great performance. ATI clearly set out to build an enthusiast board for Sapphire that other manufacturers could copy down to the smallest detail. Sapphire was smart enough to recognize a good thing when they saw it and they have faithfully reproduced the original Reference board. Our advice to most manufacturers developing ATI Radeon Xpress 200 designs would be to copy the Reference Design. Unless you are certain that you can extract even more performance from this chipset, it is best to copy the top-performing Xpress 200 Reference boards - whether single-GPU or Crossfire Dual-GPU.
At settings of 2T, we could reach even higher to a frequency of 320. There is a lot of discussion on the web these days, claiming that you can minimize the impact of the 2T setting with certain options on Revision E AMD processors. We did not verify this claim in our tests with an earlier standard Clawhammer processor, but we can tell you that all the talk about options for improving 2T performance modes are in the memory timings section. It is little touches like this that tell us that enthusiasts in ATI or Sapphire or outside the company have had a big hand in the design of the Radeon Xpress 200 family of chipsets.
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Avalon - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
This board sounds fantastic!Hacp - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Competative with similar Nforce4 boards(DFI LP) isn't enough. They need to beat the price by 5-10 dollars in order to regain the edge. I agree that the VTT options is awesome (for you BH-5 users), but in order to kill the current proven top Overclockers board, they need to be very competative with the DFI in terms of price.Also, I was wondering if they managed to fix the cold boot issue with these boards. If the cold boot issue is a non issue with these boards, and they are priced exactly the same as the DFI Lan Party boards, then it is a no brainer for BH-5/CH-5/UTT users as to which board to pick (unless they already are doing the 3.3 Rail Vdimm mod).
Also, the 2nd page, He art in the first sentence needs to be fixed, and in the first page, it says AMD in the first paragraph when its supposed to say ATI.
afrost - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
I don't think so, a lot of people complain about problems with the DFI.....and it has a super loud fan on the chipset which is difficult to replace because the video card is right on top of it.I personally would never buy a DFI....different people obviously have different priorities
If this board is rock solid stable like AT reported, then they will have a winner.
cryptonomicon - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
looks like a strong competitor, and here was a typo pg. 11"The Sapphire ATI chipset performs at least as fast as the best of nForcee4 chipset boards"
Mant - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
I think that was intentional. They're comparing the ATI to the "NForcee" by MVidia...like you can compare a Seiko watch to a BOLEXRyanVM - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
In the first pic of the motherboard, it clearly has 8 SATA ports. However, the next page lists the specs with 6 SATA ports and the next picture seems to confirm that. Is there indeed an 8 SATA port version as well?Wesley Fink - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
The pictures on page 4 were provided by Sapphire and are earlier prototypes. The actual production version we tested is pictured on page 5 and has 6 (not 8) SATA ports. We apologize for the confusion. There are indeed pads for 8 SATA ports on the production board, so there could be further developments.ncage - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
What i like:Performance in general
good audio quality (im wondering if it supports any of the eax extensions though which would be great if it did. Would elimante the need for a sound card.)
What i don't like:
bad USB2 performance. This would affect me big time. I have a pro consumer camera (8MP Olympus C-8080) and i usually transfer a bunch of images at a time from my camera to my computer so this is definitly a disapointment.
I really like nvidia as a company. Their driver team has from the start been top notch. I think that is one of the things that led to their popularity. I generally have always gone with nvidia except in the 9800 pro days because you know why. I currently own a 6600gt which i love. Anyways the only thing that upset me that nvidia did was to take out soundstorm out of thier chipsets. I hope ATI bringing high end audio will force nvidia to reconsider. Nvidia knew that a lot of customers were asking for soundstorm back yet they still wouldn't put it back in. I just don't understand this.
I hope thier are boards produced that don't have dual video card abilites because of price. I really don't want two video cards. I only occasional play games and im not going to spend 500-900 on two video cards. So we shall see how this plays out.
bob661 - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
The mobo manufacturers were griping about the price. Also, I believe the demand was too low. Yes I know lots of geeks liked it but we're a small percentage of the market.BPB - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
"Today, we look more deeply at production version of the ATI Grouper that will be launched by Sapphire next week."So, when do we actually see these? If it's by end of Summer, great. If not, it may just be too late. I think most people who've waited for ATI to get this out have already gone to nVidia. I know my buddy has.
Also, regarding Crossfire, can an AIW X800XT PCIe work with a plain old X800XT PICe?