It could be said that ATI's SB450 South Bridge is
underwhelming compared to say, the nForce4 MCPs, NVIDIA’s nForce4 MCP supports more USB 2.0 ports that have a lower CPU usage when using the USB 2.0 ports, along with native SATA II and a wider range of RAID options. However, we feel that it is worth noting that there are very few occasions where modern SATA hard disk drives can saturate a 150MB SATA bus, let alone a 300MB SATA II bus. Also it is worth noting that, unless you are constantly abusing the USB bus with large data IO, you will not suffer from the SB450’s increased CPU usage.
The SB450 also supports High Definition Audio which is leaps and bounds over NVIDIA's legacy AC97 Audio. ULI also produce a South Bridge for the ATI Xpress 200 range of chipsets but are in incredibly short supply and can cause driver conflicts between ULI South Bridge and ATI North Bridge. So, in all the SB450 may look poor on paper and has a few fallbacks, but it actually makes good sense to use it, in our opinion.
High Definition Audio comes from the familiar Realtek ALC880 codec, which is a basic High Definition Audio chip, compared to the more recent - and more expensive - ALC882M. Although there aren't any optical S/PDIF ports supplied, you do get RCA S/PDIF via a motherboard pin-out. As it is an onboard pin-out, you could always substitute it for optical S/PDIF if required. There is the same story with USB 2.0 support too. Despite the fact that only four USB 2.0 ports are provided, the pin-out for 4 more is located on the motherboard, so it is still possible to plug in extra USB devices.
Sapphire has included onboard power and reset switches for testing the board outside your case - this is exceptionally convenient for us hardcore motherboard testers. However, they also include an onboard speaker and a front panel pin-out that isn't colour-coded. The onboard speaker could become an inconvenience, especially if you don’t like hearing your PC boot. On the other hand, the lack of colour coding on the front panel pin-outs is a minor annoyance.
There is only a single Gigabit Ethernet connector included, which is somewhat disappointing when compared to many competing motherboards. We have seen reasonably priced motherboards with dual Ethernet solutions, like ECS' KN1 SLI Extreme, which included a 10/100 Ethernet port along with the Gigabit port embedded in the chipset.
Comparing single graphics card scores, the Sapphire PI-A9RX480 is marginally slower than the nForce4 SLI based ECS KN1 SLI Extreme board in all tests. This becomes more apparent in CPU limited situations, as demonstrated in our low-detail, low resolution tests. Providing the game isn't CPU limited, you are unlikely to notice a difference between the PI-A9RX480 and any other Athlon 64-based motherboard out there.
A friend of mine has claimed that I must have the Gods of ATI overlooking me. Thus far, we have not had a major problem with a production motherboard based on the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset and we've tested a few different production - and pre-production - motherboards based on the chipset over the last 9 months or so.
However, that is not to say that others haven't had problems with the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset, and also the ULi South Bridge that is a popular companion to one of the Radeon Xpress 200 North Bridges. Sapphire's board comes with ATI's SB450 South Bridge, so we didn't have to worry about driver installation for the SATA ports before installing Windows XP.
In fact, we never expected a problem with a Sapphire produced, ATI certified product and nor did we ever experience one. There is nothing major that really annoys us about the board itself. The heatsinks are glued on, instead of using the preferred push pins. There is also the set of capacitors in the close vicinity of the CPU socket. Neither of those are real problems, as such.
The lack of SATA II built into the South Bridge might be a concern for some, but SB450 has support for the SATA 1.0a specification, which means that it is still able to utilise the useful performance enhancing Native Command Queuing technology, providing your hard drive has support for it. You will not, however, be able to hot swap drives or use external SATA drives - as far as we are aware, these are strictly part of the SATA II specification.
For those who do require SATA II support, there are two additional ports included via the Silicon Image Disk Controller that Sapphire has included on the PI-A9RX480, so you're not completely left out. The other slight concern is the reduced number of RAID options available with the motherboard and its chipset - competing solutions offer a wider range of RAID options, but it ultimately depends on whether you're planning on using the on-board disk controllers for RAID.
The board may not perform as absolutely cutting edge as an nForce4-based motherboard, but it's certainly not slow. Unless you're some kind of serious benchmarker who is obsessed by the smallest of differences that we've highlighted, the performance differences will be invisible during normal system use. It may not look as clean as other motherboards, with its mass of unused solder points and big gap in the rear I/O panel, but the red and cream colour scheme is very unique and appealing. It also has everything there that you could need, too. At least, where the motherboard is concerned...
The poor package contents are a big concern to us, and has disappointed us, somewhat. However, you still get a product that is focused on the enthusiast crowd. The fact that Sapphire have taken the time to integrate mounting holes for aftermarket coolers is highly commendable. That, along with the extensive the BIOS options available for overclocking makes this board stand out. Unfortunately, we didn't have the best of luck overclocking the board, but we feel that is related to the CPU rather than the board itself.
The ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset may not be considered to be good enough to be integrated into an enthusiast product by many. However, when it is integrated like this, we beg to differ. Sapphire can only get better when refreshing the board in future revisions. Hopefully we'll see them making the PI-A9RX480 a little more affordable or alternatively, giving us more incentive to buy this motherboard with a more complete bundle.
Sapphire has laid some very solid foundations with the PI-A9RX480 and we believe it will prove to be a breeding ground for future revisions of the same product or re-spins to make new products, and we are really looking forward to seeing what comes next. However, in its current state we feel that - for what it is - it's just too expensive to justify purchasing it over competing products in the same price range with a more attractive feature set.
Not bad
