SAPPHIRE PI-A9RX480 now at newegg.

[SnipingWaste]

Newegg has them for $169
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813154006

[LowRun]

The only shop that sells it here is asking 189€, no way

[situman]

umm haven't noticed them putting out a new bios ever since its been available overseas. Not what I call good support from the company. I'll wait for results. Besides for 170 thats a hella lot of money for a non-xfire board.

[QuikSilver]

Personally, I think ATI needs to do a bit more development on these motherboards before they get them right, but once they get all the stuff worked out and get the performance up they should (hopefully) have some killer boards.

[althes]

Anyone want to give it a go

[Haltech]

That board would of been hot back in August. Too Little To Late, esp for that price and no new BIOS.. Whomever buys it now is just wasting their money.

[situman]

I'll hit it at $100. :P

[Sloppy]

C'mon Major, you know you want to buy this~

[5-Clicks]

i'm tempted. i've been considering selling my Ultra-D for a little while and possibly getting an Expert....or possibly getting this.

what's so bad about the current BIOS on the Sapphire board?

[EvilCloudStrife]

That board would of been hot back in August. Too Little To Late, esp for that price and no new BIOS.. Whomever buys it now is just wasting their money.

why do you say this? Its not like any other good crossfires are coming out anytime soon. correct me if im wrong.. I really like the white PCB as well

EDIT:ohh shoot.. its not crossfire? nevermind this motherboard then

[sabrewolf732]

wow price seems like a rip off.... the white pcb is so nice though

[Bar81]

WAAAAAAAAAAAY too late. The nonexistent support makes the price a definite no-no.

[situman]

they have about 20 boards, I know cause I tried to add 99 and only 20 showed up. hahahaaa. It didn't immediately sell out, how long did it take for the A8N32 to sell it? The time it took me to type this.

[deception``]

Too little, too late.

deception``

[calcal]

ati chipset is still not fully mature yet...and why would you pay 50 bucks more for less performance??

[Tony]

ati chipset is still not fully mature yet...and why would you pay 50 bucks more for less performance??

2 chipsets on the board m8, which one is not mature?

The south bridge is 12months old, it just has slow USB2 but the IDE and SATA1 are real fast, infact faster than some SATA2 controllers.

The Northbridge is just as good as NF4 , it controls many things and is quite overclockable. The only issue is apart from ATI making their own boards no one took it serious enough and produced a qulaity board around it. Sapphire have copied Grouper and Halibut, DFI have some issues with the RDX so were are stuck with these.

I know my Halibut here is as fast as any NF4 board i have apart from the USB.

Imature chipset, I think not...late maybe yes, but some of the blame does lie with the board manufacturers.

[situman]

If Sapphire provided more support for this board, many of our views would change. Heck Asus releases bios even before the board ships. I can't speak for others, but I haven't seen a single bios update from Sapphire for like months. The ATI chipset does seem good and it is true that hardly anyone truly went the extra mileage to make a good board out of it. With the reference board being so awesome, you would think it is easy to just copy the reference design, I mean ATI has all the blueprints already. Sapphire promoted the board, but forgot to promote the actual product. So sad.

[markr]

The board has been done for so long now. I am hopeing the bios has matured before it was even released. I ordered one so I will soon find out. Does any one know of known problems with the existing bios?

[situman]

Let us know how it goes with Opterons if you have one.

[markr]

Will do, I have a week 34 170 to try it out with.

[Arkangyl]

I think the issue with it being late are the Rumors of ATI's new chipset being about done. Also this board has been announced for way too long.

Personally looking at the board I'm curious as to why there are so many places for chips that appear to have been 'cut' from the final revision. I know the DVI-port was removed early on but the 2 SATA ports and xtra BIOS chips that were on earlier revisions and now dissapeared are curious. Sapphire could have at least cleaned up the board some; with those empty traces it looks like this is still a pre-production board; especially with no 'Premium' model to fill those traces.

Finally, it would seem this is meant to compete with the nForce 4 Ultra. However ATI is doing with it's board what it did with it's video cards; pricing them substantially higher than the competition [granted the Video cards are dropping in price rather fast, and the CF mobos arnt that far above SLI, there just are not any budget CF boards yet]

[Tony]

the bios chips were for the sata controllers, they are no longer needed so were removed.

They cut some components to save on cost, when you use high end caps etc it soon adds up on a board so something had to go to leave the board at least aaffordable.

Regards support, I have no idea but I will ask if I can release a known good reference bios that i like. The issue is its AMI and not award, but I feel it clocks better and is more stable than the Award build.It also has some added options not available in the sapphire build....I have to ask though, they say no it stays under NDA.

[situman]

Thanks Tony, they need all the help they can get anyways since they won't do it themselves.

[Bar81]

the bios chips were for the sata controllers, they are no longer needed so were removed.

They cut some components to save on cost, when you use high end caps etc it soon adds up on a board so something had to go to leave the board at least aaffordable.

Regards support, I have no idea but I will ask if I can release a known good reference bios that i like. The issue is its AMI and not award, but I feel it clocks better and is more stable than the Award build.It also has some added options not available in the sapphire build....I have to ask though, they say no it stays under NDA.

That's exactly the problem. Sapphire has been half-assing support for this board from jump. Why anyone would pay a premium for such pathetic "support" is beyond me. Personally can't stand nvidia's crap chipset solutions but I wouldn't buy this either. Thank goodness ASRock is around and ULi makes some good stuff as SiS seems to have completely abandoned the K8.

[5-Clicks]

Personally can't stand nvidia's crap chipset solutions but I wouldn't buy this either. Thank goodness ASRock is around and ULi makes some good stuff as SiS seems to have completely abandoned the K8.

Well if that ain't the most fanboyist remark I ever heard...