Sapphire's Pure Platinum A75 mainboard beckons

THE AMD FUSION RACE shows no signs of waning and Sapphire Technology has released its first FM1-socket desktop motherboard, the Pure Platinum A75, or more precisely the PT-A8A75, in ATX format and sporting the ubiquitous A75 chipset for AMD's APU range of A-series and E-series processors.

This particular A75 mainboard iteration has a Hudson D3 Fusion Controller Hub (FCH), what AMD calls its integrated chipset, that includes native USB 3.0 support, SATA III, with software RAID 1,0 and 10, 4x DDR3 1600 DIMM slots with 16GB maximum capacity plus Displayport and DVI-I video outputs. Add-on chips provide Marvell gigabit LAN ports, Realtek 8-channel audio and Atheros Bluetooth support.

Motherboard maker Sapphire has thought it worth including a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot so you can take your PC from mild gaming to Crossfire mayhem by adding one Hybrid Crossfire. Remember you'll need an A-series APU to get Hybrid Crossfire, as the E-series won't support this. The motherboard also includes a mini-PCIe 1x port in case you're considering adding some 3rd party features of your own like a mini PCIe SSD or a wireless card.

Sapphire Technology is one of AMD's biggest and oldest partners, particularly in Asia, and it is one of the few companies to market self-designed graphics cards using AMD GPUs from launch day.

Its design expertise should allow it to market unique products that can blow the competition out of the water. µ