Sapphire Pure Black 990FX-N is Purely for CrossFire

btarunr · May 30, 2011

Backed by one of the biggest OEMs in the industry, PC Partner, Sapphire does have some engineering potential to speak of. The AMD Radeon graphics card manufacturer has, on and off, tried to make inroads into the the motherboard market. With the 990FX-N, Sapphire is continuing its high-end Pure Black series. While NVIDIA SLI support isn't denied anymore for the AMD chipset platform, for political reasons (such as NVIDIA restricting AMD platform SLI licences to only those motherboard vendors who already had them for the Intel platform, cutting out Sapphire), this board doesn't support SLI. It shouldn't bother you if you own AMD Radeon, this board has sufficient PCI-Express connectivity to even allow 4-way CrossFireX.

The Sapphire Pure Black 990FX-N starts with a 10-phase VRM to power the AM3+ socket supporting AMD's new FX series processors, it is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slot supporting dual-channel DDR3 memory with speeds of over 1866 MHz. Expansion is an all PCI-Express affair, with five PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (of which one is x4), and two open-ended PCI-E x4. Storage connectivity includes eight SATA 6 Gb/s internal ports, and eSATA. Apart from that, the board features 8-channel HD audio with optical and coaxial SPDIF output, dual gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports, and Bluetooth.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

fullinfusion · May 30, 2011

Nice board for sure.

jalex3 · May 30, 2011

oh yummy great slot layout, right angled usb3! tiss a shame about the sli though. x4 sots are good to.

Steevo · May 30, 2011

bluetooth.........

_JP_ · May 30, 2011

And here I was thining of getting a PureCrossfire 890FX...This one looks nicer.

TheGuruStud · May 30, 2011

I still need one pci slot, though

Dopamin3 · May 30, 2011

VRM heatsink is pretty ugly IMO.

Totally · May 30, 2011

That's because it's covered with some kind protective plastic sticker but if it's ugly underneath that too :ohwell:

caleb · May 30, 2011

WTF Abit dies and poopy Sapphire starts to make mobos!

FreedomEclipse · May 30, 2011

All i will say is....

If they managed to hack the P45 chipset to run SLi then this only a matter of time some will come up with the same thing for this mobo

Wile E · May 30, 2011

TheGuruStud said:
I still need one pci slot, though

Get a new sound card.

Frizz · May 30, 2011

This board will allow tri-fire while leaving 1x slot for each card to breathe, looks damn good! I will be getting this if bulldozer surprises us

Maban · May 31, 2011

You say that one of the 16x slots is 4x but there is no evidence of that. They have the required caps for 16x and 8x, not to mention none of them are labeled as 4x.

16
4
8
16/8
8
4
8

xBruce88x · May 31, 2011

with it being an AMD board i'm not surprised its Crossfire Only (for now)

Volkszorn88 · May 31, 2011

Holy northbridge batman!

fullinfusion · May 31, 2011

random said:
This board will allow tri-fire while leaving 1x slot for each card to breathe, looks damn good! I will be getting this if bulldozer surprises us

Na I think this sick ass mobo will run 16x16x16x16 and toss in your pci sound card for good measure lol... 4 6950's unlocked lmao!!!! Screw SLI on this board :cool:

I bet this is the board to have top scores on Future Mark bench mark....

Bulldozer x8 + 4 x 69XX x4 = AWESOME!!!! moohahahahahaha

F $k U Intel!!!! :nutkick:

Drone · May 31, 2011

this one is fucking awesome

Relayer · Jun 1, 2011

xBruce88x said:
with it being an AMD board i'm not surprised its Crossfire Only (for now)

FWIU SLI licensing is only being offered to mobo manufacturers who already had it for their Intel boards. Which is likely every other mobo manufacturer except for Sapphire. :cool:

Formula350 · Jun 3, 2011

TheGuruStud said:
I still need one pci slot, though

Not practical, but you could get one of the PCI->PCIe x1 adapters of eBay :eek:

They'd raise the card up (thus not being practical), but also run like $30 after shipping and it's just a chinese-made product :eek:

:shadedshu

Dopamin3 said:
VRM heatsink is pretty ugly IMO.

Totally said:
That's because it's covered with some kind protective plastic sticker but if it's ugly underneath that too

It's not a sticker or protective plastic, from what I can tell. Looks like they don't have the board and/or the heatsink styling plates finished, so in an effort to at least give people and idea or what the heatsink plates will look shape-wise, they just cut out some clear plastic and adhered them to the heatsinks. The SB (NB/SB?) looks like it had some holes punch in it to be screwed on, but they went with sticky putty instead :laugh:

fullinfusion said:
Na I think this sick ass mobo will run 16x16x16x16 and toss in your pci sound card for good measure lol... 4 6950's unlocked lmao!!!! Screw SLI on this board I bet this is the board to have top scores on Future Mark bench mark....

Bulldozer x8 + 4 x 69XX x4 = AWESOME!!!! moohahahahahaha

F $k U Intel!!!!

Whoaaaa, simmer down thar! :slap:

lol

I'm sure you were just kidding around, but for anyone else, it for surely won't have full x16 bandwidth on every slot lol If anything it'll be:

x16/x6 for Dual
x16/x8/x8 for 3-Way (hopefully not x16/x16/x4 as some have been )
x8/x8/x8/x8 for Quad.

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Sapphire Pure Black 990FX-N is Purely for CrossFire

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator

fullinfusion

Vanguard Beta Tester

jalex3

Steevo

_JP_

TheGuruStud

Dopamin3

Totally

caleb

FreedomEclipse

~Technological Technocrat~

Wile E

Power User

Frizz

Maban

xBruce88x

Volkszorn88

fullinfusion

Vanguard Beta Tester

Drone

Relayer

Formula350

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