Sapphire PURE CrossFire PC-A9RD580 Motherboard

Introduction

While we have been a bit behind at the labs the last couple of weeks, its still doesn't mean we aren't into our work head deep. The battle between ATI and nVidia for dominance of the 3D arena has never been stronger, and with multi card systems now becoming the norm, the competition has never looked better.

nVidia have been the first to pioneer the latest technologies with SLI and Dual PCI Express x16 based chipsets for their setups, but ATI has been close behind with Crossfire graphics cards and Xpress Crossfire supporting chipsets.

Just before CeBIT in Germany launched, ATI introduced its newest member to the Xpress chipset family, the 3200 series. This latest series adds some much needed features that were lacking in the first Xpress implementations, especially if they want to keep up with nVidia in the 3D battle.

Today we are taking a look at the first of the Xpress 3200 boards to cross our labs at TweakTown, the Sapphire PC-A9RD580 motherboard. How will it stack up compared to its rival, the nVidia nForce 4 SLI x16 chipset based motherboard from MSI?

Let's have a look and see.