"Grouper" first look

The Grouper/Halibut reference designs obviously have CPU temperature reporting capability. In fact, the design is superior than any other that I've seen. It uses a high quality standalone device that has an operating range of -55C to 150C and high accuracy. This is a significant improvement over most board that just use the superIO. This was done for all the subzero cooler users and at the request of XS members during the original poll on what features you all want.

If Xbitlabs had contacted Sapphire or ATi on this issue they would have been told that the sbios on the sample board is not the most recent and that a new one would be sent over with this feature enabled.

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Originally Posted by MaxT

well, that's dissapointing news. :shrug:

no CPU temp monitoring? (this can't be right!)
higher cpu utilization by the network controller and the usb controllers.
not all the capacitors are of the same quality?
no bootup diagnostics LEDs?

and that's just the issues i care about, others might care about the poor sustained usb 2.0 speeds and so on.


I was looking forward to this board too (well, the crossfire one). :/

Overall impression is, seems like they are trying to cut costs to introduce the board at a competetive price to the DFI NF4 boards.

I'll wait for the DFI CF review to make up my mind. But so far leaning towards the DFI NF4 SLI-D. :( God I hate nVidia videocards! :(

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Will ATI ask sapphire nicely to not use crappy CAPS?? I would pay 10 bucks more if it means not killing my CPU. Or I could just save the 180 bucks and not buy the Sapphire board. :)

hell I would pay $50 if I knew they only used the best caps and resistors available...

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All in all, Sapphire mainboard is not any better than nForce4 based overclocker’s mainboards. It is just much more expensive. That’s all.

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-Ilya Gavrichenkov

I am getting so tired of all the hype, delays and promises. What has it been now? 2 out of three reviews I have read say this board isn't cutting the mustard!?

First Sapphire tosses out the IGP, now this?! DAMN IT! they have stripped the original design to save money, yet it somehow costs more than the competition while offering less?

2+2 still = 4. no?

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Originally Posted by Grayskull

Looks like some more clarifications are needed....the reference design specifies only Nichicon (black) and Sanyo (purple) caps in the cpu power delivery and memory power delivery sections. All these caps are rated to 105C and of the highest quality. It seems the Sapphire implementation is different.

We have built countless numbers of reference boards and I've never seen one fail as described by xbit labs...even ones running under cascade coolers and ridiculous Vcore.

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After months of waiting you have no idea how disapointing that is to hear, I can't believe / understand why sapphire have done that. I don't care about minor usb issues, I understand that the bios is still under development etc but I do care greatly about quality. If there are using cheap caps then that undermines the whole design and purpose of the board. :(

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Originally Posted by Grayskull

the reference design specifies only Nichicon (black) and Sanyo (purple) caps in the cpu power delivery and memory power delivery sections. All these caps are rated to 105C and of the highest quality. It seems the Sapphire implementation is different.

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Well, thanks for clarifying cos' that puts Sapphire out of the equation for me, will have to wait for the new contender bigtoe mentionned and hope it will do better than Sapphire :rolleyes:

I'm alittle disappointed personally.

I would need a PCI and/or PCI-E slot for a HDTV tuner, sound card, PPU at the very least, as well as having 2 x 16 Lane PCI-E slots (1 for GFX card), 1 for math co-processor if is priced under $1500.

Then maybe also an I-RAM.

Also the USB performance is disappointing amonst other things. Too bad, I guess I'll stick with my buggy Ultra-D with its F'D up Network till M2 socket mobo's come out.

I was all over these boards when this thread first started. But now I'm with the above, I'll probably stick with my nF4 DFI. Really sucks too because I was so ready to get rid of this board.

It was a nice try by ATI/Sapphire, but you kind of shot yourself in the foot. If these boards would of started rolling out around the 15th (as originally stated) of last month bug free then they would of been something to talk about.

I dont know how great this ATI board in overclocking is , but the great board means it must have a good performance ( usb , network , ide , sata ...... ) and then plus great Oc support .

All of us who watching this thread at the beginning hoped ATI and Sapphire will get better than the "buggy" DFI NF4 , and after 9 months ATI shows their poor performance chip , that is pretty funny . Now i watch this thread for knowing the "buggy" of ATI chipset , not for hope getting a great board than my DFI NF4

And btw , i'm using my DFI NF4 for 9 months and it is still rock , nothing to complain about the performance , some bug are known and they are almost fixed , that's how cool DFI did for user

But i wish ATI can fix soon :toast:

Best regard

cant really say its ATI's fault. ATI specified quality caps, Sapphire decided to use crap. The peripheral issue is ATI's fault. I THINK they insisted on using their Southbridge instead of using ULi's where it is 100% and works great. Still, since Sapphire is ATI's oem/board partner, ATI should have more of a control over what goes out the door since Sapphire pretty much represents ATI.

I am tired of hype and half ass construction...
If a company just made a very good product with just the best parts..
They would be loved by all overclockers...
Hell I would pay $400 for a board that would allow me to play WZ21 with all the mods on and at max settings...
I would probably have to spend atleast $500 on a new graphics card but hey I want to see the Drazon Mod in full detail...

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Originally Posted by nn_step

I am tired of hype and half ass construction...
If a company just made a very good product with just the best parts..
They would be loved by all overclockers...
Hell I would pay $400 for a board that would allow me to play WZ21 with all the mods on and at max settings...
I would probably have to spend atleast $500 on a new graphics card but hey I want to see the Drazon Mod in full detail...

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thats where the problem is-

"most overclockers doesn't represent the market.

Selling 200 $500 boards Vs selling 15,000 $250 boards is quite a difference.. :(

I'm sure if we put the engineers to it, they could make some very very impressive overclocking stuff, however, they are constantly constrained because of marketing.

Granted, yea, they do target the enthusiast crowd, but very very few people are willing to shell out $200 for a motherboard.... :stick:

Not everyone has $500 for a mobo... heck, my PC was almost $700 total...

Its all about finding the right balance between cost to make, and features... some companys do it right, some screw it up pretty bad... and its begining to look like sapphires going to the bad category if they keep the prices that high :(

this thread has suddenly got very negative!

Let's wait until one of us has got our hands on a retail sapphire board, until we pass judgement on it. It's about the only way we can be really sure.

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Originally Posted by don_vercetti

this thread has suddenly got very negative!

Let's wait until one of us has got our hands on a retail sapphire board, until we pass judgement on it. It's about the only way we can be really sure.

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http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/Gruper/

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Sapphire is targeting to sell the board at around $169, which is certainly not cheap, but high-quality components have its price.

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They didn't keep the ATI logo, dumped the integrated video, and still costs a ton... :slapass:

I'll be taking a look at DFI's x-fire mobo, unless theres a decent competitor price wise, and component wise. Atleast it'll match my ultra-D. :cool:

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Originally Posted by Revv23

so great, the good reliable board is the one that we are unable to buy...

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Looks like it... :confused: Maybe the ATI powered DFIs will be the ones to get.

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Originally Posted by dippyskoodlez

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/Gruper/

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yeah i saw that, but i still say wait until it comes into retail. And for a start, as has been said, they only managed to get a DFI to 245mhz, so something is up with there methodology on that count.

regarding DFI Ati; hasn't that always been the way?

The Xbitlabs review raised a possible issue with poor quality capacitors leading to boards failing. Looks like it may not be the stability king we were looking for.

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They used electrolytic capacitors from three manufacturers: SANYO, Nichicon and TEAPO. The first two names have been long known as high-quality component makers, however, the last one used to deliver capacitors of not very reliable quality and not very long life-time. Today TEAPO claims that there are no problems with the quality of their electronic components any more. However, during our stress-tests one of Sapphire PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480 mainboard failed for this particular reason: the capacitor dies when the board was running with a Venice based CPU overclocked to 2.8GHz. So, I would doubt the absolute reliability of the processor voltage regulator on this mainboard.

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Obviously got to wait until it actually goes retail (now mid september @ Ocuk), but the signs arent brilliant atm.

G

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Originally Posted by Master_G

The Xbitlabs review raised a possible issue with poor quality capacitors leading to boards failing. Looks like it may not be the stability king we were looking for.

Obviously got to wait until it actually goes retail (now mid september @ Ocuk), but the signs arent brilliant atm.

G

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Hehe, we've been debating this for two pages now, wanted to give you the "Welcome to last week" smiley but was affraid you got upset :D

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Originally Posted by Master_G

The Xbitlabs review raised a possible issue with poor quality capacitors leading to boards failing. Looks like it may not be the stability king we were looking for.

Obviously got to wait until it actually goes retail (now mid september @ Ocuk), but the signs arent brilliant atm.

G

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agreed if they dump the crap caps..
I might buy it.. But they have 30 Days left to get it to the market..
if they want my money...

30 days? screw that, they can keep the boards by then. I'm running happily on my Asus A8N-E. Just see sig. 1.55vcore is good enough. Due to its crappy heatspreader, increasing vcore is just going to cause more heat and stability issues.

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Originally Posted by LowRun

Hehe, we've been debating this for two pages now, wanted to give you the "Welcome to last week" smiley but was affraid you got upset :D

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Lol, you could go for it, would be totally true, i have been on holiday for the past 8 days so i am a week behind, have spent the past day reading around trying to catch up. I read a few posts up but didnt get to the caps bit.
:am: :lastweek: :p:

G

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Originally Posted by LowRun

Well, thanks for clarifying cos' that puts Sapphire out of the equation for me, will have to wait for the new contender bigtoe mentioned and hope it will do better than Sapphire :rolleyes:

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my thoughts too...

i will not be putting my $1k CPU (FX-57) in a mobo with crap caps! :nono:

Tony (bigtoe),
any thoughts/comments? you havent posted since this "crap cap" info has come out...
do you know what caps this "mystery manufacturer" will use?

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Originally Posted by Joe Camel

i will not be putting my $1k CPU (FX-57) in a mobo with crap caps! :nono:

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Yup! I consider the Motherboard to be the most important part of the computer (don't shoot me) it is the glue that holds all parts and is resposible for all the parts communicating properly, it is the very foundation of the system.

Swapping MB's is not something as eaisily done as a video card or stick of ram or CPU or soundcard or.... you get the idea.

My current system is so old I'm embarrassed to tell you what it is :( let me just tell you I purchased an ALI based MB from ASUS based on a THG review eons ago, turned out that chipset had timming / power issues with AGP.

I had and still run a Voodoo3 3000 in it because thats the only card that will actually run in this damned MB! no nVidia or ATI card Iv'e ever put in it would run, in 3d anyway. By the time I realized this board was an absolute POS it was too late the CPU's were no longer being sold and I could't afford to buy the 'new' system that was obviously required.

My point is the MB, not any other component is imho MUCH more important than any other component in the system. Sorry for the rant but right now i am pissed! I have been waiting for years to upgrade this damn thing and when I'm strung along the marketing machine BS I get uptight.

^^^ IMO, the PSU is the most import "quality" component for a stable [xtreme-ly] overclocked system.

But the motherboard is a very close second... :toast:

...followed by the memory ... and don't forget, a good CPU doesn't hurt... neither does a good h/f or watercooler... oh man :eek:

Guess my money is going towards dfi's version of grouper now or that other mystery one.... twiddle.