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| Sapphire Pure Crossfire AM2RD580 SLI under CrossFire | |
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(Review by MS, October 8, 2007) |
What You Get
The shipping box conforms to Sapphire's standard configuration. The silver-colored box leaves just a tiny window open for a sneak preview of the actual motherboard through a translucent window. The rest of the window is covered up by a fold-over flap, held in place by a piece of Velcro. After flipping over the flap, the PC-AM2RD580 presents itself in all its technical beauty and elegance, a cream-white PCB with red silk screening and black expansion slots - with the exception of the memory slots that are color-coded for dual channel action. We'll have more detail on the board including layout and components in a bit.
Hardware
The hardware bundle shipping with the PC- AM2RD580 is not the most opulent but it has the necessary cables for IDE devices and floppy drives as well as two SATA data cables along with the necessary power adapters. Add-on brackets included are for IEEE1394 Firewire and S/PDIF. Extra USB ports are not included, this is fine for most users since almost all contemporary cases feature extra front USB ports with the necessary cabling anyway.
Software Bundle and Drivers
The software bundle comprises the driver CD with a very intuitive install shield. There are still a few minor blemishes that relate mostly to the novelty of the platform and the associated lack of concise instructions by ATI of how to structure the installation procedure, however, everything installed right away from the control panel using the "update driver" option. All in all, this part of the software is perfectly sufficient.
A big bonus - especially in view of the pain one has to go through with e.g. ASUS' ULI-based boards to create the necessary floppy for the SATA driver installation on a virgin system - is the inclusion of no less than two separate floppy discs for the native use of the Silicon Image 3132 SATA2 host bus adapters as well as another floppy disc containing the RAID drivers for the SB600 South Bridge. Whoever has gone through the agony of trying to find the appropriate drivers on an "Install CD" that has to be run on a second computer (because they are the first thing needed) and then, the system exits with the comment that this motherboard is not supported, followed by another error message that the "make driver disk" utility exits for the same reasons will greatly appreciate the value of these floppy discs. A small investment for the manufacturer but a potentially huge payoff for the end-user.
The rest of the software bundle contains PC-BackUp and PrivacyProtector, both by StompSoft along with the "Sapphire Select" DVD featuring Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within, Tony Hawk's Underground2 and Richard Burns Rally. The latter two titles are somewhat outdated, and even the first two are almost hitting two years of age, but nonetheless, it is something to get started with and the games are overall decent enough. Unfortunately, the purchase price after expiration of the 60 trial minutes is inflated compared to the current market price as listed e.g. at Amazon.com (checked: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within). On the other hand, the mark-up ($14.20 compared to $11.67) wouldn't even cover the shipping and handling charges, not to mention the gas for a trip down to the next PC-outlet and the associated local sales tax. However, it does not hurt to check online since there are always specials that are listed at substantially lower cost than that asked for through Sapphire Select.
Manual
Previous Sapphire manuals essentially fulfilled the legal requirements of showing what slots had to be filled with what and how the CPU retention lever had to be turned to lock the processor, whereas otherwise, they drifted off into trivia and inaccuracies. A fine-looking line of motherboard like this might be worth, though, some extra work. The next step was to rewrite some of the more interesting sections of the manual, especially those relating to the BIOS settings. Quite honestly, this is not the first time I have done this kind of stuff, but here is the difference, Sapphire actually took the material and incorporated it into the latest generation of their manual. Needless to say that there is a certain bias when looking at my own contributions but the current version of Sapphire's manuals is probably the best that is out there - at least with respect to BIOS settings.
next page: => The Board =>
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