Introduction

Sapphire works very closely with ATi for years. So it’s surprising the with the pure CrossFire A9 RD580 more or less for the launch of the ATi Xpress-3200-chipset for a motherboard for the market available stand Socket 939 hardly. Only Asus was at that time faster and already distributed some motherboards to the present press on the launch event in Seville, Spain. So, we just in time could present a practical test to present the new Northbridge. After all ATi provides all 40 PCIe lanes in only a chip at the time as sole chip supplier, which is quite remarkable.

To the chipset enough words should be already been said so, and thus we focus exclusively on the Sapphire mainboard. To the test, the more expensive version was for us. A somewhat stripped down version without white PCB and with fewer features is listed with the addition of “Advanced” at retailers. Again, Sapphire has built some special features, which we will enter into the following more closely. We want to say so far appeared as usual article to socket-939 and Socket 754 motherboards at this point to our.

Bookmark

In addition to the comparison of the various chipsets for Socket 939, which provides an overview of the facilities and performance, Cool’n’ quiet feature of Athlon 64 processors worth reading, even the basics of the used processor from AMD and the Guide for the very interesting are cool. Matching of the energy consumption of processors and the basics of PCI Express are worth a look.

• MSI K8N diamond plus and ECS KN1 SLI extreme
• EPoX 8NPA SLI (Socket 754)
• ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe with RD580
• Sapphire PC-A9RD480 CrossFire
• nForce 410 / 430 with GeForce 6100 / 6150
• EPoX 9NPA + ultra/SLI and Sapphire PI A9RX480
• ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe
• ATi Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition
• nVidia nForce 4 SLI vs. VIA K8T890
• Three times nForce 4 SLI
• Socket 939: ATi vs. nVidia vs. VIA
• EPoX EP-8KDA3 + (Socket 754)
• MSI K8T neo-FIS2R vs. shuttle AN50R (Socket 754)
• SK8N Asus vs. MSI K8T Master1-FAR (socket 940)
• Athlon 64 FX-55 and 4000 +
• AMD Athlon 64 3500 + and 3800 +
• Athlon 64 FX-51 and Athlon 64 3200 + (basics, AMD Athlon 64)
• Athlon 64 with cool Cool’n’ quiet (Guide)
• Energy consumption of current processors
• PCI express – the basics

The subject

First, we want to give an overview of the equipment of tested motherboard again. As a comparison, here we are facing the data of ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe.

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Sapphire PC-A9RD580

• Scope of delivery
  • Driver CD for motherboard
  • Software CD
  • Sapphire Select CD, trial version
  • User’s manual, also known as manual, approx. 64 pages
  • 1 x slot FireWire 400, 2 ports
  • 1 x slot S/PDIF RCA, in + out
  • 1 x SATA data cable
  • 1 x IDE cable, 80-pin
  • 1 x floppy cable
  • 1 x ATX I/O-bracket

Layout

The layout of A9RD580 is very similar to the the older sibling with a RD480 chipset. Instead of two PCI slots there is only one, but an additional PCIe x 1 slot. Striking the white PCB again, of course and the large print on the back.

Importation or development of RAM ties succeeds even when mounted graphics card because all bottom closures of four RAM slots have enough distance to the video card. This is the slave graphics card comes the PATA port in the way however with corresponding map length. Both North and southbridge are equipped with passive heat sinks. The voltage stabilization of the processor and some small ICs are also passively cooled.

A total of three three-pin Fan connectors available are. At the bottom right of the two buttons for reset and power are located. Also the info LEDs are again from the game. You give information about assignment of the RAM-seats, power and serve as control LEDs for PATA and SATA drives. For the CMOS clear, you must change a jumper right next to the battery in a known manner for a few seconds.

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BIOS

The BIOS was present in version A0411_A, the Sapphire RAID BIOS carry version number 4.2.66, which the SiI 3132 the 6.2.11.

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ACPI Suspend
The Sapphire mainboard supports the two most important modes with S1 and S3. Both can be selected individually or together in the BIOS. From the combined mode, the computer only by keyboard or on/off switch, from the S1 mode per keystroke, mouse click or pressing the/switch can be again wake up. To move the computer from the S3 mode or the combination mode back to work, you need the on/off switch or a PS/2 keyboard or mouse. With a USB mouse or keyboard was not possible a waking them up.

Fan control
Wrong, more one can not say. Unfortunately, the engineers at Sapphire have renounced the implementation again. At the present time already a shame. All connected fans can spread their noise level completely unregulated. Alone due to this fact, the PC-A9RD580 Sapphire has received a significant devaluation!

BIOS Flash
A BIOS update is possible only by the startup disk and the award Flash program. Apparently are the watches with Sapphire stood again, as other manufacturers offer significantly more convenient ways for years.

Software

The Sapphire application after the auto-start of the CD offers the following content:

• Driver
  • ATi chipset drivers
  • HD audio driver
  • SiI SATA II RAID driver
• Utility
  • Trend Micro Internet Security 2004
• On board device
  • Marvell PCIe GLan driver

In addition, three icons are displayed. The first icon lists the files on the CD and their versions as a text file. The second icon calls the file manager to browse the CD and with the third one to close the Sapphire application.

Sometimes the drivers in a x 64 version on the CD are available, but not for all components. Missing we have the “AMD processor” driver, without the cool & quiet is not possible. A hardware monitoring tool is unfortunately also, so that not even the CPU temperature can be read out. SiSoft Sandra as well as SpeedFan brought the computer attempting to access the sensors, to crash. Sapphire should work on the extent of its motherboard CD anyway.

A backup, a privacy, a data recovery tool and an anti-spyware software are located on an another CD. The two latter are only trial versions. On the third CD are then the trial versions of the following games:

• Brothers in arms – road to Hill 30
• Prince of Persia – warrior within
• Tony Hawk’s underground 2
• Richard Burns Rally

Test system

• Processor
  • AMD Athlon 64 4000 +
• CPU cooler
  • AMD boxed cooler
  • Zalman CNPS7000B CU
• Motherboard
  • Sapphire PC-A9RD580
• Memory
  • 2 x 512 MB OCZ PC3200 EL Platinum Rev. 2
• Graphics card
  • MSI NX6800GT-T2D256E
• Peripherals
  • Samsung P80SD SATA II, 80 GB (1 x system, 3 x RAID)
  • Pioneer DVD-ROM DVD-105
  • Iomega 250 GB USB 2.0 / FireWire 400 / 800 external
• Other
  • Avance B031 housing
  • Tagan TG480 U22-2Force power supply 480 Watts
  • Noiseblocker S2 ultra silent fan 80 mm (three pieces)
• Software
  • Windows XP Professional SP2
  • DirectX 9.0 c
• Driver
  • ATi catalyst 5.13
  • nVidia ForceWare 77.72

Benchmarks

• Synthetic benchmarks
  • PCMark05 1.01
  • SiSoft Sandra Professional 2005SR2a
  • PCI Express return channel-bandwidth
• System benchmarks
  • WorldBench 5
• Interfaces
  • Network: NTtttcp
  • USB 2.0: HDTach 3.0.1.0 to your external hard disk
  • FireWire 400 / 800: HDTach 3.0.1.0 to your external hard disk
  • Sound: RightMark Audio Analyzer 5.5
• Controller
  • RAID 0: HDTach 3.0.1.0
  • RAID 1: HDTach 3.0.1.0
  • RAID 5: HDTach 3.0.1.0
• Games
  • Doom 3 1.3
  • Earth 2160 1.2
  • FarCry 1.32
  • Half-life 2
  • Painkiller 1.64

All benchmarks are in a screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 with 32 bit color depth carried out. All measurements are made regardless of the chip set with only a graphics card. Exception is the multi-GPU chipsets, where the games benchmarks be measured Additionally with two graphics cards (also here with a screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 and 32 bit color depth).

Synthetic benchmarks

PCMark05

• Official website: www.futuremark.com

• Download: ComputerBase.de
  • At a cost: free standard version, but only with limited features

• What benchen we?
  • Version 1.01 professional

  • Default-benchmark
  • Special settings: – No.

Sandra 2005

• Official website: www.sisoftware.co.uk

• Download: ComputerBase.de
  • At a cost: free version

• What benchen we?
  • Sandra Professional 2005 SR2a

  • Arithmetic and multimedia performance of CPU, memory transfer rates
  • Special settings: – No.

PCI Express performance

The speed of the back channel of the graphics card can be measured with an older tool in 2002 by the company serious magic. So the range of the PCIe bus can be measured indirectly.

System benchmarks

WorldBench

• Official website: www.pcworld.com

• Download: No download possible
  • At a cost: 249 USD

• What benchen we?
  • Version 5

  • Complete benchmark run
  • Special settings: – No.

ACDSee PowerPack 5.0

Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1

Adobe Premiere 6.5

Nero Express 6.0.0.3

Discreet 3ds max 5.1

MS Office XP SP2

MS Media Encoder 9.0

Mozilla 1.4

Multitasking

Musicmatch Jukebox 7.10

VideoWave movie creator 1.5