Sapphire to Launch Two High End Motherboards

[Tharic-Nar]

SAPPHIRE Technology, best known as a manufacturer and global supplier of graphics solutions has just announced plans to seriously address the motherboard market with the introduction of high end Intel platforms.Sapphire, one of AMD's largest GPU partners has decided to step up its game by launching two new motherboards. In stark contrast to their usually subdued offerings, these models will focus on the enthusiast market. Both will carry the Pure Black name and feature Intel's X58 and P67 chipsets.

You can read the rest of our post and discuss here.

 

[Kougar]

Very interesting Sapphire is expanding their role in the motherboard market... or that they are only NOW launching an X58 motherboard. Not the best timing there!

 

[Tharic-Nar]

Sapphire actually have a number of motherboards already, mainly AMD based with an LGA775 thrown in. So it's not a sudden break into the motherboard market, but it's probably their first 'real' attempt at getting any publicity - since these are high end offerings. The 1366 platform will be around for a few more months yet, we won't see LGA2011 till Q3 this year... or even 1356 for that much (but that'll be sooner, regardless).

Also, details are up, along with pics of the 1366 board.... I know, you all want the scoop on the 1155/P67 board, but we have to be patient...

http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?leg=&psn=000102&pid=1045

I'll update the article when I can.

 

[Optix]

I'm not sure what they were thinking release a X58 board so late in the game but the option was there to view LGA1366 models yesterday only the page would not load. They must have been in the process of building it.

The X58 model has already sprung up on another site for review the same day the press release was issued so if pre-release models are out there the retail version cannot be far behind.

I was in the shower this morning and started thinking about Lucid's Hydra (I do my best thinking there for some reason) and whether you could also use PhysX in addition to a mix of AMD/NVIDIA cards? That way you'd have the added performance of a dual card solution -and- PhysX to boot!

 

[Tharic-Nar]

In theory, yes, you can have PhysX on the NVIDIA card with the AMD GPU doing the graphics... in practice, no, because NVIDIA prevented GPU acceleration of PhysX when another - non NVIDIA based GPU was installed on the same system. Remember the boat load of complaints and the various 3rd party mods to get PhysX working again from last year?

 

[Kougar]

I wasn't even aware Sapphire had LGA775 anything!

I had seen Sapphire's AMD boards, but given AMD's condition in the last couple years now it's not a healthy market segment with any margins left to easily develop for. There's not much point in designing a high-end board board that would mandate a high price for a super-budget priced processor. Anyone willing to pay that much for the board would just swap to an Intel platform.... but I guess I just answered my own question as to why Sapphire is suddenly diving into current-gen Intel platforms.

 

[Optix]

In theory, yes, you can have PhysX on the NVIDIA card with the AMD GPU doing the graphics... in practice, no, because NVIDIA prevented GPU acceleration of PhysX when another - non NVIDIA based GPU was installed on the same system. Remember the boat load of complaints and the various 3rd party mods to get PhysX working again from last year?

I thought they did away with that after they were slammed on just about every forum?

 

[Rob Williams]

The choice if releasing an X58 board at this point in time is a little bizarre, but I guess it boils down to the fact that it's the lone choice for the ultimate Intel high-end, and it might even have been silly to not support it. So far, the board looks quite good. I'm just curious to see what the BIOS will look like, and whether or not Sapphire will be bundling overclocking and other tools with the boards.

It'll be hard to compete with the likes of EVGA, ASUS and GIGABYTE, but another competitor is never a bad thing.

 

[Kougar]

I thought they did away with that after they were slammed on just about every forum?

What happened was NVIDIA released a set of beta drivers, and someone discovered they did not disable PhsyX when an AMD GPU was detected. It was either an oversight or done only for their beta testers, but at first NVIDIA said they were going to pull it. After the resulting uproar they left the driver up... it was one of the beta 256 drivers. NVIDIA stated they would continue to disable PhsyX when an AMD GPU was detected in future WHQL drivers though...

It'll be hard to compete with the likes of EVGA, ASUS and GIGABYTE, but another competitor is never a bad thing.

I totally agree. Perhaps their position as a GPU company can lead to some interesting products down the road... I know EVGA was a much larger company, but they certainly rocked and took over the mainboard market for awhile there.

 

[Optix]

*sniff, sniff*

I smell review fodder!

***EDIT: Money shots of the P67 board previewed at this year's CES have started to pop up.

 

[Rob Williams]

I totally agree. Perhaps their position as a GPU company can lead to some interesting products down the road... I know EVGA was a much larger company, but they certainly rocked and took over the mainboard market for awhile there.

I agree, EVGA has done some great things, so it's time to see what Sapphire's made of.