Think of three AMD partners and, chances are, that Sapphire will be one of them. The company is AMD's largest add-in board (AIB) partner and its fortunes are inextricably linked in with the success of Radeon GPUs.
Sapphire, however, has been backing more than one horse recently. It has debuted a range of small-form-factor PCs, and dallied with projectors, heatsinks, and motherboards.
At CeBIT 2013, Sapphire showcased another venture that falls under the Pro-AV banner. Known as PowerCast X, this is Sapphire's attempt at breaking into the lucrative digital-signage market by harnessing the potential of AMD's GPU and Eyefinity technology.
PowerCast X is a piece of Sapphire-developed software that enables users to setup multi-display, multi-format, multi-zone digital signage quickly and easily. In conjunction with a FirePro W600 GPU (pictured) and Sapphire's Vid-2X technology a single card can GPU-accelerate content to 12 displays, though only six are shown in the above photo.
The entire effect is better understood when viewed in real-time, so here's Sapphire's Liv Stewart providing us with an at-show demonstration of how PowerCast X works.
As you can see, there are multiple independent zones each filled with either picture, video or general content. And while the six-monitor display can produce impressive results, with minimal CPU and GPU usage, there's no reason why it can't be run on one or two monitors from a budget Radeon card or even an APU's video outputs.
Sapphire's using the GPU acceleration and Eyefinity Single Large Surface technologies in a different way here, for more than just gaming. PowerCast X is mooted to cost $299 for a single license and is aimed at businesses that need simple, easy-to-use digital signage driven by mainstream technology.
