Review: Sapphire Pure RS780G Hybrid CrossFire motherboard: hot or not at £60?

by Michael Harries on 18 July 2008, 05:00

Tags: Sapphire

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qan7r

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System Setup

 

Motherboard Sapphire PI-AM2RS780G Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H ASUS P5E-VM HDMI
Chipset AMD 780G + SB700 Intel G35 + ICH9R
CPU AMD Athlon X2 4850e (2.5GHz, 512KiB L2 cache per core, 2000MHz HTT, Socket AM2) Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2180 (2.0GHz, 1MiB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB, LGA775)
BIOS revision VER:06 (05/19/2008) F3c (02/13/2008) 0405 (12/17/2007)
Memory 2GBytes (2 x 1GByte) G.Skill F2-6400CL4D-2GBHK 2GBytes (2 x 1GByte) Corsair PC6400 XMS2 EPP
Memory timings and speed 4-4-4-12 2T @ DDR2-714.4 4-4-4-12 2T @ DDR2-717.5 5-4-4-12 2T @ DDR2-802.8
Integrated graphics ATI Radeon HD 3200 @ 500MHz Intel GMA X3500 @ 667MHz
Discrete graphics ATI Radeon HD 3450 256MiB (600/1,000), inc. Hybrid XF N/A
Disk drive(s) Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS)
Mainboard software Catalyst 8.2 (IGP) Intel Inf 8.4.0.1016
Graphics driver CATALYST 8.2 BETA. 8.3 BETA for Hybrid CrossFire PV 15.7.3 (7.14.10.1409)
Operating system Windows Vista Business x64

Tests

Benchmarks

SiSoft SANDRA memory bandwidth
ScienceMark 2.0 memory latency
HEXUS.PiFast to 10M places
HEXUS WAV encoding
HEXUS DivX 6.6.1 encode + enhanced multithreading
CINEBENCH R10, 32- and 64-bit
POV-Ray v3.7.0 Beta 21a, 32- and 64-bit

HDTach 3.0.1.0 - SATA average read speed
HDTach 3.0.1.0 - SATA burst speed
HDTach 3.0.1.0 - USB average read speed
HDTach 3.0.1.0 - FireWire average read speed

Company of Heroes: OF v2.103, DX9 - 1,024x768
Quake 4 v1.30 SMP on - 1,024x768
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.2 - 1,024x768


Testing notes

As comparisons, we're looking at another RS780G board, in Gigabyte's GA-MA78GM-S2H, and as an Intel platform alternative, the Intel G35-based ASUS P5E-VM HDMI. These setups directly compete in terms of feature-set and price, even if the IGP performance of the AMD setups is likely to be higher. You can look here for our previous look at the Gigabyte and ASUS boards.

We have chosen to complement the AMD mainboards with an energy-efficient AMD Athlon X2 4850e, and the Intel chipset with a Pentium Dual Core E2180. Both are representative of the low-cost, low-power processors usually paired with an IGP in system-integrator boxes

The RS780G does support Phenom CPUs, if you're looking for a little more performance from a mATX board.

2D benchmark performance will be determined, in large, by the ability of the processor. Storage performance will fall on the southbridge, and gaming is the domain of the IGP.

We'll also throw in a discrete Radeon HD 3450 256MiB to test the Hybrid CrossFire performance of the RS780G chipset.

The memory speed on our AMD platforms is somewhat lower than the Intel, even when using the same modules. Due to the 12.5x multiplier of the 4850e CPU and its limited memory ratios, our DDR2-800 memory was restricted to running at DDR2-714.4 on the Sapphire and DDR2-717.5 on the Gigabyte.