Best Athlon 64 MOTHERBOARD: Sapphire PI-A9RX480 !!??!! Vdimm=4.0v in .5v increnments!

[derektm]

"Without overclocking the Sapphire PI-A9RX480 is the fastest AMD64 motherboard"

"...in 3DMark2001, the PI-A9RX480 is faster than any other Athlon64 motherboard. When overclocked it is even faster than the 4.5 GHz Pentium 4. This is a good sign that 3DMark junkies are going to love this board."

Link to article: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/Gruper/10

It has a TON of memory options and very good overclocking options. Its beating the DFI NF4 too.

Vdimm to 4.0v in .5v increnments too!

Anyone know where to get one of these babys?

[Mr. Tinker]

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[Ugly n Grey]

Vdimm to 4.0v in .5v increnments too! Anyone know where to get one of these babys?

Maybe .05v is what you were getting at...

[derektm]

Maybe .05v is what you were getting at...

Don't be so picky

[texuspete00]

If he didn't make that joke first, I would have.

Anyways, fastest non-OC'd might not matter. Probably <1% most times. Not that I like giving up 1%, but there have been situations in the past where it didn't amount to a hill of beans. Rather have a board that OC's like a bat out of hell than one slightly faster at same settings that can't put enough hustle behind your comp's muscle. Maybe I'm underestimating the difference, but with the mem controller on the cpu, my way of thinking makes sense to a lot of people I'm sure.... especially those that have noticed what I outlined happen. Proof is in the putting is all I'm saying.

[derektm]

If he didn't make that joke first, I would have.

Anyways, fastest non-OC'd probably matters little to most of us. Probably ~.5% most times. Not that I like giving up .5%, but there have been situations in the past where it didn't amount to a hill of beans. Rather have a board that OC's like a bat out of hell than one slightly faster at same settings that can't put enough hustle behind your comp's muscle. Proof is in the putting is all I'm saying.

But if you took time to read that review then you'd see that board is faster than the DFI NF4, even overclocked at the same speed...

[NetZeroZeus]

Yes, but which one go overclock further?

[texuspete00]

But if you took time to read that review then you'd see that board is faster than the DFI NF4, even overclocked at the same speed...

I mean stuff like pulling maximum overclocks and high HTT's my friend. I admit I should have read more at first, it does quite well with HTT and all. Still needs to be the more the rule than the exception. If it gets on top of the orb, I'll buy it.

Guy above me got it. He's probably seen it happen too. I don't mean to imply I know this issue to be the case. Happy you posted it.

[shadowing]

I mean stuff like pulling maximum overclocks and high HTT's my friend. I admit I should have read more at first, it does quite well with HTT and all. Still needs to be the more the rule than the exception. If it gets on top of the orb, I'll buy it.

Guy above me got it. He's probably seen it happen too.

Exactly what I am thinking. This Sapphire board is NOT the best until we can see whether or not it can hold high htts and other areas.

[Garrett]

Maybe .05v is what you were getting at...

LoL indeed... half a volt at a time, imagine

anyway, looks like a decent board, I'll keep an eye out for more reviews :thumbsup:

[sai]

Hopefully someone kicks DFI's ass, I can't stand that y boards anymore tbh

[JfRsQ]

VDIMM slots spacing could be problematic with some heatspreaders or memory but interesting anyway.

[sai]

I hate it when the ATX plug is right under my HDD cage, pretty annoying to get it in there.

[JfRsQ]

But if you took time to read that review then you'd see that board is faster than the DFI NF4, even overclocked at the same speed...

Look at the test system specs so fair...good job

.We are using faster timings on the Sapphire PI-A9RX480, so it is obvious that the board is faster. But if you consider the memory performance of earlier chipsets, the benchmarks make clear that ATI has greatly improved as compared to earlier chipsets

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/Gruper/8

PURE: Memory: 2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Gold GX 2-2-2-5
LanParty: Memory: 2x 512MB TwinMOS PC3200 2.5-3-3-8

[Grayskull]

All popular dimms have been tried and have no clearance issues at all.

VDIMM slots spacing could be problematic with some heatspreaders or memory but interesting anyway.

[Grayskull]

If you're going to try and break the HTT record with this board it's probably not going to happen and it's done on purpose. There is a fundamental difference internally to the chipset on how overclocking is done compared to most others. The HTT range will be high enough for all pratical (even extreme!) purposes. There is no reason to run 400 HTT and then pull down the memory and CPU core speed with higher divider values. I don't know why anyone would do this.

The chipset is optimized for clock to clock efficiency, that's where the performance is. We have made a conscious decision to ignore the high HTT bragging rights, we'd rather get the highest performance.

Exactly what I am thinking. This Sapphire board is NOT the best until we can see whether or not it can hold high htts and other areas.

[Grayskull]

Actually the resolution of vdimm is significantly higher than 0.05V. It's at 0.05V steps in the CMOS for simplicity and else the VDIMM table would be huge.

Anyone who authors an overclocking tool for this board can expose a VDIMM resolution as fine as 0.02V. Same for Vcore.

LoL indeed... half a volt at a time, imagine

anyway, looks like a decent board, I'll keep an eye out for more reviews :thumbsup:

[sai]

If using 4 DIMMs it could be a "little" heat problem

[jinu117]

Looking forward to it in my rig. Guess reinstallation of windows is in order.
I've always noticed some boards being tad smoother at same clock speed vs another board even using same chipset. Also noticed some boards flat out overclocking better thant the other board... up to 2% difference in clock speed. (might not sounds much but now around 3ghz, thats nice 60mhz more overclock)
If this board is doing both, imagine the actual potential
I just hope this one isn't one of the system killer I've seen over and over recently.

[5-Clicks]

lookin nice! so far, great job ATI with that chipset. Sapphire gets points for having a very unique looking board, but there's still something about the yellow and orange against a dark gray/black background. I think the DIMMS will be fine fitting, but heat with Winbond chips might play an even more effective role.

[Fairydust]

PURE: Memory: 2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Gold GX 2-2-2-5
LanParty: Memory: 2x 512MB TwinMOS PC3200 2.5-3-3-8

Thanks for pointing this out, I didn't even check as I assumed they would run a fair comparison. This makes the results totally useless to me. Don't get me wrong, I want this board to be good, I held off buying a new rig until it was out and I could compare it to the NF4 boards. But saying it is faster at the same speed, when the memory timings are not the same is just bad reviewing.

[Grayskull]

Anybody running Winbond based DIMMs at high voltage (3.2V+) and in an enclosed case, should have a fan blowing over the dimms anyways. No amount of spacing will help that.

Anyone running 4 dimms at nominal voltage or even a bit higher will have no problems.

lookin nice! so far, great job ATI with that chipset. Sapphire gets points for having a very unique looking board, but there's still something about the yellow and orange against a dark gray/black background. I think the DIMMS will be fine fitting, but heat with Winbond chips might play an even more effective role.

[Grayskull]

The Anandtech review used the same physical parts (memories and CPU) at the same settings.

Thanks for pointing this out, I didn't even check as I assumed they would run a fair comparison. This makes the results totally useless to me. Don't get me wrong, I want this board to be good, I held off buying a new rig until it was out and I could compare it to the NF4 boards. But saying it is faster at the same speed, when the memory timings are not the same is just bad reviewing.

[don_vercetti]

god i want this board, but i dont want to wait a month for it!

[trance565]

i think if i get some money, i may just get it cuz its got white pcb, thats not very common ...

also the dimms remind me of the abit fatal1ty, just put a fan or 2 over the slots if you running all 4 dimms at once

"The front panel connector is neither color-coded, nor labelled. At least it follows the specification." - prolly not good for a first build or even a second

the 4 pin molex is dumb being that far away

its nice they gave lots of mounting holes for the mosfet area ... for people that build their own water blocks and what not

i like the bios xD - msi board user

the hyper transport control seems a bit dif but kool

i like the board.. i want one ...