Sapphire PURE Innovation - ATI's Chipset for the AMD Enthusiast
by Wesley Fink on July 29, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
The ATI Xpress 200 Chipset Family
Last fall's introduction of the ATI AMD chipsets featured the SB400 south bridge. The Sapphire and upcoming Radeon Xpress 200 introductions combine the north bridge with the ATI SB450 south bridge, which features High Definition Azalia audio for both AMD and Intel. This is the first chipset to bring High Definition audio to AMD. The SB 450 also supports PCI-e Gigabit LAN, standard SATA 150, and has improved USB burst performance compared to the earlier SB400 chipset. We will see full SATA 2 support and a completely reworked USB controller in the SB600, which will launch in the 4th quarter of this year.
The various ATI Radeon Xpress 200 north bridges can also be combined with ULi south bridges. The current ULi 1573 provides all the features of the ATI SB450 except integrated Gigabit Ethernet. This includes High Definition Azalia audio. Gigabit Ethernet can be added as an external chip and the ULi 1573 also supports NCQ hard drives, which are not supported on the SB450, according to ATI.
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RobFDB - Saturday, July 30, 2005 - link
Guess you missed where i said "(with the exception of MSI)". Learn to read mate before you go posting.RobFDB - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
ATI and Sapphire should be congratulated for bringing the AC880 to AMD users. We had it good with Soundstorm but since then onboard audio as gone back several steps (with the exception of MSI). Its good that AMD users are being given the option to have quality onboard audio.bob661 - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
This what impresses me the most about these boards is this codec support. I still won't buy an ATI chipset until the third or fourth version comes out (you guys can test it for me) but impressive features and performance nonetheless.jab98 - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
*codecerwos - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
"[AMD] Enthusiast" is written with a capital E in the article, and it should not be, since it's not a proper noun. Please fix this error, because it looks grossly unprofessional to anyone with a reasonable command of the written word.RobFDB - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Really though, get over it. It doesnt matter in the slightest if we're being honest here. Anyway back to more important matters.I'm really happy that ATI have managed to bring a top performing board aimed at enthusiasts to market. I was also extremely impressed to see Sapphire implement 4v for the RAM. One issue that i'd like to see investigated is wether the cold boot issue that affects DFI NF4 boards using OCZ VX mem @ high voltages affects the Sapphire board too. Aside from that this is a very impressive showing from ATI. One last thing. I have a x850XT PE and i'm not sure if that can be used as a slave card when ATI bring out the R520. If so that would make a very attractive upgrade.
rjm55 - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
The X850XT PE works fine as a slave with the X850 Master Card. In demos at Computex, ATI was showing an X850 Master with an X850XT PE slave.Jojo7 - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
This isn't exactly true. Ati distributed a special driver that SIMULATED crossfire. The actual cards were really just 2 identical x850xtpe's. Though, one probably had an altered bios to simulate a master card.Read it for yourself: http://anandtech.com/weblog/default.aspx?bid=231">http://anandtech.com/weblog/default.aspx?bid=231
dlamblin - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
Did I miss the mention in the article? Is this an ATX or an mATX board. I'm guessing the former, but it wouldn't be out of place to list the fact along side the rest.erwos - Friday, July 29, 2005 - link
It's ATX. If it has more than four slots, it's too big to fit the mATX standard.