Review: SAPPHIRE PURE Innovation A9RX480 S939 Mainboard

by Tarinder Sandhu on 29 August 2005, 00:00

Tags: Sapphire

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabpg

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System setup and notes

System setup and notes

Test Platforms
System SAPPHIRE PURE Innovation System ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 System ABIT AX8 S939 System Intel i955X System
Processor(s) AMD Athlon 64 4000+ AMD Athlon 64 4000+ AMD Athlon 64 4000+ Intel Pentium 4 660
Mainboard SAPPHIRE PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480 ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 ABIT AX8 VIA K8T890 Intel D955XBK
Memory 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS2-5400UL
Memory timings 2-2-2-5 1T @ DDR400 2-2-2-5 1T @ DDR400 2-2-2-5 1T @ DDR400 3-2-2-8 @ DDR533
Graphics Card ATI RADEON X850 XT PE - PEG16X - CATALYST 5.4
Disk Drive 160GB WD IDE & 36GB SATA Raptor
BIOS Version BIOS 9th August 2005 BIOS 13 - 25th April 2005 BIOS 10 - 25th February 2005 BK95510J.86A.1452.EB
Operating System Windows XP Professional, SP2 (32-bit)
Mainboard Software ATI NVIDIA ForceWare 6.39 platform driver VIA Hyperion Pro v4.55 Intel INF Update Utility 7.0.0.1019


Benchmark Software
HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
ScienceMark 2.0 (7th February 2005)
Realstorm 2004
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
picCOLOR 32-bit v4.0
KribiBench v1.1
Microsoft Movie Maker 2.1
Simpli Software's HDTach 3.01

DOOM 3 Timedemo 1
3DMark2001SE b330
UT2003 Bot Match

Notes


No problems to report during a weekend of testing. The board successfully completed a 24-hour stress test without issue.

We'll be looking at the 'PURE's performance against 2 established S939 chipsets from VIA and NVIDIA, respectively. An Intel i955X will be thrown in for good measure.

The running speed of the four PCI-Express-based systems were as follows:

3600.2MHz - Intel i955XBK - Intel i955X - Intel Pentium 4 660
2411.2MHz - ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 - nForce4 Ultra - AMD Athlon 64 4000+
2410.9MHz - SAPPHIRE PURE Innovation PI-A9RX480 - ATI Xpress 200P - AMD Athlon 64 4000+
2405.4MHz - ABIT AX8 - VIA K8T890 - AMD Athlon 64 4000+

Compatibility

The benchmarks that follow were conducted with our tried-and-trusted Corsair Xpert XMS3200XL modules in situ. We also tested compatibility with DDR RAM from Mushkin, Patriot and OCZ. Again, there were no problems to report.

On to the benchmarks!