Introduction

I would like to thank Sapphire for supplying the tested motherboard.

Sapphire is well known to everybody for making top-notch ATI video cards. Recently they introduced a whole range of motherboard products based on ATI's chipsets. The latest addition to this lineup is the PI-A9RD480. It supports two ATI video cards running in CrossFire for an even smoother gaming experience.

Sapphire's naming scheme works like this:


The chipset in use is the ATI RD480. It offers the same features as the other Rx480 chipsets and additionally support for CrossFire.



Sapphire is making the PURE motherboards with enthusiasts and gamers in mind, so we can expect some good overclocking features from this board.

Features

Specifications from Sapphire

Chipset

• ATI RD480 x SB450 Chipset

Processor

• Support for AMD K8 Processor in Socket939 package
• Support Hypertransport Interface bus

VRM (Voltage Regulator Modules) on Board

• Flexible motherboard design with on board VRM, easy to upgrade with future AMD K8 processors
• 0.800V to 1.55V in 25 mV steps

System Memory

• A total of four 184-pin DDR RAM sockets
• DIMM size support from 64MB to 2GB
• Support of dual channel 128-bit wide memory interface
• Support of 266/333/400 DDR RAM memory type

System BIOS

• PnP, APM, ATAPI and Windows 2000/XP
• Full support of ACPI & DMI
• Auto detects and supports LBA harddisks with capacities over 160GB
• Easy to upgrade BIOS

Plug and Play

• Supports Plug and Play specification 1.1
• Plug and Play for Windows 2000 and XP
• Fully assignable PCI interrupts

Onboard I/O

• Onboard two PCI fast IDE ports supporting up to four ATA, ATA2, Ultra ATA33/66/100/133 IDE HDDs, CD-Roms, ZIP drives and LS-120 drives as boot drive
• One floppy port supports two FDD of 360KB, 720KB, 1.2MB, 1.44MB and 2.88MB capacity
• Eight USB ports (four ports via two headers)
• PS/2 keyboard connector
• PS/2 mouse connector
• One front panel sound connector

Extended USB Support

• Includes 2 OHCI host controllers, increasing the number of external ports to eight
• Includes 1 OHCI USB2.0 host controller that supports all eight ports (Bandwidth shared between eight ports)
• This motherboard supports USB 2.0 feature only on Windows 2000 (with SP4 or above) and XP (with SP1 or above) OS.

Onboard Marvell 88E8052 PCI Express Gigabit LAN

• Full compliance with IEEE 802.3u 100 Base-T specifications and IEEE 802.3X Full Duplex Flow Control
• Supports 10 Mb/s, 100 Mb/s and 1000 Mb/s operation
• Supports Wake-On-LAN function and remote wake-up

PCI Express x16 Graphics Interface

• Two 16-lane (x16 port) PCI Express port intended for external graphics
• ATI CrossFire Dual Graphic Card Supported
• Full compliant to the PCI Express Base Specification Revision 11.0a
• The base PCI Express frequency of this interface is 4 GB/s
• PCI Express supports an enhanced addressing mechanism
• An optional ADD2 card can utilize PCI Express Graphics x16 connection

Power Management

• Supports SMM, APM and ACPI
• Break switch for instant suspend/resume on system operations
• Energy star "Green PC" compliant
• Hardware monitoring circuit is supported, provide voltage, fan speed etc. monitoring
• Wake-On-LAN (WOL) support
• Supports Suspend-To-RAM (STR)

Onboard ALC880 7.1 audio

• Integrated Realtek ALC880 controller
• Fully Sound and Sound Blaster compatible
• Full-Duplex 4 24-bit two-channel DACs and 3 stereo 20-bit ADCs
• PnP and APM 1.2 support
• Windows 2000/XP drivers ready
• Line-In, Line-out, Mic-in, SPDIF-in, SPDIF-out
• Supports ALC880 codec for eight channel sound output

Onboard IEEE1394

• Compliant with IEEE1394 OHCI specifications v1.0 and v1.1
• Integrated 400Mb 2-port PHY

Onboard Serial ATA Host Controller

• Independent DMA operation on four ports
• Data transfer rates of 150 MB/s
• RAID 0/1 feature support

Onboard Serial ATA-II Host Controller

• Independant DMA operation on four ports
• Data transfer rates of 300 MB/s
• RAID 0/1 feature support

Expansion Slots

• 2 PCI Express x16 slot
• 2 PCI slots - ver. 2.2 compliant

Packaging

The package with its reflective color and window design will sure stand out on retailer shelves.


On the back of the box is a description of the motherboard and specifications.


When you open the front cover you can see the pretty white motherboard in the box.


Inside the box, under the motherboard you have manuals and accessories well arranged.