Sapphire Technology is pleased to announce that the new high end, 125W PhenomCPU’s just released by AMD (Model numbers 9750 and 9850) are fully supportedacross the latest range of SAPPHIRE mainboards, including the high endPC-AM2RD790 – PURE CrossFireX 790FX, the new mainstream CrossFire boardPC-AM2RX780 – PURE CrossFireX 770, and the microATX Hybrid CrossFire board withintegrated graphics, PI-AM2RS780G – Hybrid CrossFire 780G.

The PI-AM2RS780G and PC-AM2RD790 will require a BIOS update to recognise the newCPU ID’s correctly. The new BIOS are already posted in the driver section of theSAPPHIRE web site http://www.sapphiretech.com

Of particular note is that SAPPHIRE has full support for these new CPU’s on its780G product, PI-AM2RS780G. This is NOT the case for the majority of competing780G designs as they have used a far less capable configuration for the powersections and will only be able to support the earlier 95W CPU’s. (9500, 9550,9600, 9650)

Sapphires low-profile, single-slot Radeon HD 7750 graphics card, which weve been tracking since Computex 2012 (June), is finally launched. The card uses an active fan-heatsink to cool the 1.5 billion transistor GPU, and is designed for HTPCs and SFF PCs in general.

Sapphires low-profile single-slot HD 7750 graphics card uses a 2+1 phase VRM design, consisting of compact chokes, driver-MOSFETs, and tantalum capacitors. The card draws power from the PCI-Express slot. The AMD Radeon HD 7750 graphics processor is clocked at 800 MHz, and is wired to 1 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide memory interface, clocked at 1,125 MHz (4.50 GHz GDDR5-effective).

The cooling solution deployed by Sapphire is a monolithic aluminum heatsink, which is ventilated by a 40 mm fan. The heatsink appears to make contact only with the GPU. The card has an all-digital display output loadout, including dual-link DVI, mini-DisplayPort, and micro-HDMI. Adapters are included in the package, for micro-to-standard HDMI, mini-to-standard DisplayPort, and DVI to D-Sub. The card comes with a low-profile bracket pre-fitted, and full-height bracket is included in the package (on most low-profile graphics card bundles, its the other way round).

Based on the 28 nm "Cape Verde" silicon, the Radeon HD 7750 graphics processor from AMD is based on the Graphics CoreNext architecture, packs 512 stream processors, a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, and support for the latest graphics APIs, including DirectX 11.1. Sapphire did not release pricing of its low-profile single-slot HD 7750 graphics card.

Dave Orton, CEO of ATI, just confirmed Sapphire’s Number 1 position with ATIat Sapphire’s Worldwide Sales and Marketing meeting.

"Thank you for all of your support of ATI in 2005. Sapphire is ATI’s largestand best performing partner World Wide,” he said. “We have the highestconfidence in Sapphire."

KD Au, Sapphire CEO went on to say that "Sapphire’s strength and best assetis its people."

“Sapphire is committed to ATI’s roadmap in VGA and will continue to build onour successful VGA product line,” stated Adrian Thompson, Sapphire VP ofMarketing, “and we have complete confidence in ATI’s Integrated solutions.”

“We will continue to work closely with ATI in achieving a dominate presencein the Motherboard business in 2006 while exploring new multimedia opportunitiesin the marketplace,” he concluded.

Having chatted with Sapphire back at CeBIT a couple of weeks ago, we knew the company is planning on taking a slightly different direction for its future motherboard products and the Pure Platinum A55V looks like its a step in that direction. What were looking at is a fairly basic motherboard for AMDs APUs, without being a feature stripped board like what many of Sapphires competitors are offering when it comes to the A55 chipset.

The slot layout is fairly basic with a single x16 PCI Express slot, two x1 PCI Express slots and three PCI slots, but as AMDs APUs dont support more than one discrete graphics card, this is unlikely to be an issue for those considering this motherboard. The standard six SATA 3Gbps ports are all present and its the only area where Sapphire hasnt added anything in terms of functionality.

Were quite surprised to see features like dual BIOS, a POST80 debug LED, power, reset and clear CMOS buttons on a board at this price point. One feature we cant quite figure out is the inclusion of a front USB 3.0 pin header, yet we can only locate one USB 3.0 host controller and it appears to be connected to the rear USB 3.0 ports and the board isnt sharing the same PCB as one of Sapphires other models.

The rear I/O isnt overwhelming, but its got enough ports for your average user with a PS/2 port, four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 5.1-channel audio and a D-sub, DVI and HDMI port. Overall not bad for what should be a fairly affordable board and if Sapphires new strategy is one of offering more affordable motherboards with an improved feature set, this isnt a bad first step in that direction.

Source: Sapphire

August 12 , 2005, Hong Kong: Delivering new levels of performance in the mid range graphics market, Sapphire Technology Limited, the leading supplier of ATI-powered graphics accelerators, has just launched two new models of graphics accelerator in the Sapphire RADEON X800 family.

Sapphire’s RADEON X800GT series will deliver new levels of performance to anyone looking for a PCI Express solution at affordable prices. Based on the highly successful X800 architectures, two models will be available, both using a 256-bit memory interface and featuring 8 pixel pipelines, offering a choice of memory size and clock speed options.

The Sapphire RADEON X800GT 256MB is equipped with DDR3 memory and operates with a standard core clock speed of 475MHz and memory speed of 490MHz (980MHz effective). The Sapphire RADEON X800GT 128MB uses 256-bit DDR1 BGA memory; and has standard core speed of 475MHz and memory speed of 350MHz DDR (700MHz effective). Both types ship with Sapphire’s recently announced TRIXX overclocking tool which will enable the performance of these cards to be accelerated and maximised to give the user unrivalled performance in this class.

Dual monitor operation is supported, and the provision of both VGA and Video-Out connectors allows simple connection to CRTs, TFTs and TVs. Accessories provided include: S-Video cable, Composite Cable, Dongle, DVI to VGA adapter and 7-pin S-Video to HDTV.

Sapphire’s Radeon X800GT fully supports Microsoft DirectX® 9 and incorporates ATI’s SmartShader™ and SmoothVision™ technologies for the better enjoyment of top gaming titles, digital photography, video editing and web surfing. Sapphire’s Radeon X800GT delivers the best graphics and video at its price point.

Its easy to forget that Sapphire makes motherboards, as the company isnt exactly making a lot of noise about its motherboard products. The company has sneaked out yet another new model and this time were looking at its second AMD A75 motherboard, the Pure Platinum A75P. This is a lower-end version to the Pure Platinum A75, although it does seem to have a couple of advantages over its higher-end sibling.

Its all a bit of a head scratcher, as the Pure Platinum A75P appears to have more power phases, but it might just be using a different PWM layout, it has more PCI Express x1 slots, it has a second x16 PCI Express slot and its got six SATA ports So ok, the x16 slot still only gets four lanes from the chipset and the additional x1 PCI Express slot is most likely going to be blocked by the graphics card if one is installed, but these are still features wed expected to see on the high-end model, rather than the mid-range one.

Plenty of things are missing though, as the Pure Platinum A75P only has two DIMM slots, but this is hardly a major issue with the price of 4GB DIMMs these days. The mini PCI Express slot is also missing, but considering that this is a mostly useless feature on a desktop motherboard, we dont see this as a big deal either. The Marvell network controller has been swapped for a cheaper model from Realtek, although on the upside, Sapphire has moved the various buttons on the motherboard to the front of the PCB rather than putting them below the bottom PCI slot.

Having a look at the rear ports its clear that a feature thinning has taken place, although there are still four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports (with an additional two via an internal pin-header), a PS/2 port, Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1-channel audio and a D-sub, DVI (single link only) and HDMI port. Its a shame that the DisplayPort had to make room for a D-sub connector and the Bluetooth dongle of the Pure Platinum A75 was a neat addition, although wed rather have the extra internal SATA port over the eSATA port.

A new feature has also been added which Sapphire calls the "Memory Free button" but we have to be honest and say that we have no idea what this does and there are no details about what it does on Sapphires website either. Overall this looks like a decent enough product if the price is right, but once again Sapphire hasnt really managed to create something that makes it stand out from the competition. No word on pricing or availability as yet, so its really quite hard to say how well the Pure Platinum A75P will do. Sapphire is also working on a pair of AMD A55 models and at least one AM3+ board, but we have no word on as to when these will be announced.

Source: Sapphire

The following is a press release:
SAPPHIRE Launches 2nd Generation of DX 11 Graphics CardsHD 6800 Series brings new features including support for 3D displays
SAPPHIRE Technology, the largest manufacturer and supplier worldwide of graphics solutions based on AMD technology is announcing the first products in a second generation of video cards to support the advanced graphical features of Microsoft DirectX 11 and delivering spectacular video clarity, speed and visual effects, including over multiple monitors and 3D stereoscopic displays.
The SAPPHIRE HD 6800 series features the second generation of graphics technology from AMD designed to support all the features of Microsoft DirectX 11 and DirectCompute 11. The new GPU’s are built in AMD’s 40nm process to deliver high performance with low power consumption. Advanced hardware features include an enhanced Tesselation unit, dedicated HDR Texture compression, multi-threaded communication with system CPU cores, embedded support for many of the DirectCompute 11 instructions, 3D stereoscopic support and HDMI 1.4a.

Two new cardsThe SAPPHIRE HD 6870 has a new architecture with a total of 1120 stream processors and 56 texture units delivering massively parallel computing power for graphics and other accelerated applications. Its core clock speed of 900MHz, together with a dedicated high speed interface to 1GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1050MHz (4.2 Gb/s effective) delivers class leading performance. It boasts a very modest active power consumption and, using Dynamic Power Management, the card has a super low-power idle mode.At the same time, SAPPHIRE will introduce the SAPPHIRE HD 6850, with the slightly smaller configuration of 960 stream processors and 48 texture processing units. Clock speeds of 775MHz for the core and 1000Mhz (4 Gb/sec effective) for the memory give users access to excellent performance at a lower price point with full DirectX 11 support and all the features of this new generation of technology.
Video, audio and 3DLike previous generations, the SAPPHIRE HD 6800 series has an on board hardware UVD (Unified Video decoder) – this technology is now in its third generation, considerably reducing CPU load and delivering smooth decoding of Blu-ray? and HD DVD content for both VC-1 and H.264 codecs, as well as Mpeg files, and now introducing support for Multiple Video Coding for Blu-Ray 3D.Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio is supported, and HDMI capability has also been upgraded to HDMI 1.4a. This now provides deep colour, enhanced high resolution output for Digital Theatre applications and 3D stereoscopic support as well as 7.1 high bit-rate audio.
EyefinityIn addition to spectacular image clarity, speed and visual effects, the SAPPHIRE HD 6800 series supports the AMD multi-monitor mode known as Eyefinity. This allows a single GPU to display images over an array of several monitors, opening up exciting possibilities not just for multi-screen gaming but also for information systems, multimedia systems and promotional displays.The HD 6870 has two DVI, one HDMI and two mini-DisplayPort outputs, allowing a wide choice of monitor configurations to be used. The HD 6850 has two DVI, one HDMI and a single DisplayPort output. With the release of the DisplayPort v1.2 drivers, it will be possible to daisy chain several DisplayPort v1.2 monitors from each DisplayPort output.
Accelerated applicationsThe multiple stream processors of the HD 6800 series can be used to accelerate other applications such as video transcoding. The latest generation of web browsers can be GPU accelerated, and this is also supported for enhanced productivity in Microsoft Office 2010.
The SAPPHIRE HD 6800 series is supported by AMD’s DirectX 11 WHQL certified graphics driver which delivers support for all of the key DirectX 11 level features required for enhanced gaming experiences as well as GPU acceleration of supported applications.

For more information please visitwww.sapphiretech.com

Bothcards SAPPHIRE HD 6950 Dirt3 Special Edition (shown on the left) andSAPPHIRE HD 6870 FleX Dirt3 Special Editionare non-overclocked edition. However, both of them are bundled with a Dirt 3 game coupon, which allows you to download the full game for free. Addtionally, the HD 6950 Dirt 3 Special Edition also features a special cooler with a dual fan configuration.

Full press releasehere-SAPPHIRE.

Heresthefull specifications of the HD 6950 Dirt3 and HD 6870 Dirt3.

Supports 3 DVI monitors in ATI Eyefinity mode, right out of the box!
Up to 4 monitor ATI Eyefinity mode support from one card

SAPPHIRE Technology introduces the SAPPHIRE HD 5770 FleX, the latest graphics card in the highly successful SAPPHIRE HD 5000 series. This is the first graphics solution to support three screens in ATI Eyefinity mode, out of the box, without the need for DisplayPort monitors or active adapters. The SAPPHIRE HD 5770 FleX can also support four monitors in ATI Eyefinity mode with a single card.

The SAPPHIRE HD 5770 FleX is a SAPPHIRE original design based on the latest 40nm graphics architecture from the ATI division of AMD. It supports the advanced graphical features of DirectX 11, and delivers spectacular video clarity, speed and visual effects.

The SAPPHIRE HD 5770 FleX is the first card on the market to support three DVI monitors in ATI Eyefinity mode and deliver a true SLS (Single Large Surface) work area without the need for costly active adapters. The majority of HD 5000 series cards with ATI Eyefinity support require the third monitor to be DisplayPort compatible, or an active DisplayPort to DVI or VGA adapter to be used.

With the SAPPHIRE HD 5770 FleX, the first two monitors are connected to the DVI outputs, as usual. A third DVI monitor can be connected to the HDMI output with the passive cable adapter supplied or to the DisplayPort output with a simple passive adapter. This allows users with existing DVI monitors to use three of them in ATI Eyefinity mode without any additional investment.

Four monitors can all be used in ATI Eyefinity mode with this card – but in this case the fourth monitor does have to be DisplayPort connected.

With 800 Stream processors and 1GB of the latest GDDR5 memory, together with clock speeds of 850MHz core and 1200MHz (4.8GHz effective) for the memory, the SAPPHIRE HD 5770 FleX delivers excellent performance. Its dual heatpipe cooler and profiled fan with dust resisting sealed ball bearings keep the card cool yet running quietly even under load.

Source: SAPPHIRE PR

VR-Zone checked out the new Sapphire HD 4850X2 card and done some quick tests on it using the Core i7/X58 platform. Thecooler casing looks pretty nice andheatsinks beneathlooks muchlike the Intel reference cooler. The air is drawn in by the dual fans and exhaust out from the top of the card (there is a hole at the top sideof the cooler). This card is clocked at 625MHz for the core, 1000MHz for the memories and has 800×2 stream processors.

HD 4850X2- 3DMark Vantage Performance

HD 4850X2- 3DMark Vantage Extreme

HD 4850X2- Crysis Warhead @ 1600×1200

HD 4850X2- Crysis Warhead @ 1920×1200

HD 4850X2- Crysis Warhead @ 2560×1600

HD 4850X2- Far Cry 2 @ 1600×1200

HD 4850X2- Far Cry 2 @ 1920×1200

HD 4850X2- Far Cry 2 @ 2560×1600