Sapphire Shows Off Vid 2X, Motherboards, etc.

Sapphire was showing off their latest products in their suite, including a just-in-from-Taiwan Ivy Bridge motherboard, along with X79 and 990FX motherboards for SNB-E and Bulldozer. Also on display were several graphics cards; the 7970 was a given, but the other two are a bit more esoteric. The 6450 Flex includes two DVI-D outputs and an HDMI output, plus an HDMI-to-DVI, allowing to drive three DVI monitors from a low profile card. The other card is a 6670 low profile card, which as far as we know is the only retail low-profile single-slot video card with that level of performance.

To go along with their graphics cards, Sapphire is also preparing to start shipping a new product, the Vid 2X. There are two models, one that takes dual-link DVI and can drive two single-link DVI displays at FullHD resolutions. The other Vid 2X has a DisplayPort input and can again drive two single-link DVI displays. We’ve seen other similar hardware before (e.g. Matrox has their DualHead-2-Go product line), but Sapphire’s Div 2X is hardware agnostic and looks at the EDIDs of the connected displays and then presents itself as an EDID display capable of twice that resolution (e.g. 3840x1080 maximum for two connected 1080p displays).

The device can work with any GPU, and if you want to do bezel correction there are six DIP switches that allow you to control bezel correction from as few as 4 pixels up to 186 pixels (in 4 or 6 pixel increments). You can also send a single signal over, and the first DIP switch controls clone or center modes (the latter mostly being for digital signage usage). Sapphire had the Div 2X connected to a MacBook Pro 13 driving two 1080p panels at 3840x1080, along with the laptop’s built-in display. Obviously rendering performance for that many pixels will require a lot more GPU power than the SNB HD 3000, but for other uses that just need lots of displays (e.g. day traders), such products are very popular. Availability should be widespread by the end of the month, with an MSRP of $179.

Another product on display was their Mini-PC Edge-HD³, a netbook packing AMD’s recently updated E-450 APU. The unit is very small and should offer much better performance than previous Atom-based netbooks (including Ion), with 4GB RAM, a 320GB HDD, and HDMI output (along with VGA and audio). Availability is expected in February for around $300.