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Sapphire Pure Crossfire A9RD480 There was something we meant to say .. but we forgot
(Review by MS, Dec 22 2005)

The shipping box of the PC A9RD480 is all flash'n dance, featuring a very attractive yet unobtrusive grey on silver exterior. Needless to say that a transparent window allows a sneak preview of the board, which, in its white and red color scheme perfectly harmonizes with the packaging. Since there are different versions with different capabilities, it is worth looking at our decoder ring before making a purchasing decision, just to make sure that it is the right board that is chosen. In short, P stands for Pure, C for Crossfire (alternatively there can be an I for "Innovation"), A9 designates the AMD Socket 939, and RD480 the x480 series NorthBridge. We will eventually see this NorthBridge being replaced by the upcoming x580 series for dual x16 lanes PEG connnectivity.

Inside the slick exterior is - in typical Sapphire fashion - the usual brown box with the top window to show off the mainboard inside its TV-dinner packaging. Underneath the board are the accessories, comprising one each of SATA, 80-pin IDE and floppy cables along with a S/PDIF I/O rear bracket and a dual IEEE 1394 firewire port. Overall, the bundle is a bit skimpy, at least two SATA cables and a set of SATA power adaptors would be nice to see.

   

Included are further the driver and application software CD and the printed manual. The latter looks good at first glance, offering an abundance of information - until one starts actually looking for something, only to realize that a lot of the explanations are either wrong or just a rehashing of the question. Admittedly, the manual could be a lot worse but it is kind of sad seeing the L2 cache being described as external on-board cache - let's face it, the Slot A era is over now, likewise it's been awhile since we had ISA expansion cards. Other explanations, specifically some of those relating to APIC or memory timing parameters are nothing short of nonsense. In other words, nice try but it might be worth having a technical writer look things over before they go into press.

The driver CD is useful for the initial system installation particularly for the drivers of third party components but - and there is nothing wrong with that - new drivers are constantly being released and given the number of bug fixes, a download of the latest version from ATI is absolutely mandatory. Overall the install shield is very intuitive and easy to navigate.