Sapphire is ready with a high-end socket LGA1155 motherboard based on Intel Z77 chipset, the Pure Platinum Z77. This is Sapphire's second Z77 motherboard disclosed so far, after the Pure Black Z77 it showed us, at CES. Sapphire is offering 3-way multi-GPU support in a very unique way. Three of its four PCI-Express x16 (long) slots are wired to the CPU, all three of them PCI-Express Gen 3.0. The topmost slot is x16 and x8 capable (x8, if any of the other two slots are populated); the middle slot is x8 and x4 capable (x4, if the bottommost blue slot is populated); while the bottommost slot is x4 capable. PCI-Express 3.0 x4 offers bandwidth comparable to PCI-Express 2.0 x8 (or PCI-Express 1.1 x16), which doesn't heavily bottleneck today's graphics cards. An ingenious slot layout, made possible by inexpensive PCIe lane switches, instead of expensive bridges.Apart from the three Gen 3.0 slots, there's a fourth long slot (black), which is electrical PCI-Express 2.0 x4, and wired to the Z77 PCH. Two PCI-Express 2.0 x1 slots find room in the middle. The LGA1155 socket is powered by a 12-phase digital PWM power circuit. SATA connectivity on board consists of two SATA 6 Gb/s, and four SATA 3 Gb/s, there are no eSATA ports. The board doesn't have any third-party USB 3.0 controllers, and makes do with the four ports the PCH provides (two on the rear panel, two via header). 8-channel HD audio, two gigabit Ethernet interfaces, Bluetooth, and display connectivity consisting of one each DVI, D-Sub, HDMI, and DisplayPort, makes for the rest of it. There are overclocker-friendly features such as POST INT display, and dual-BIOS. Expect this board to be a part of the first wave of Z77 motherboards, probably slated for later this month.