Sapphire Pure Platinum A85XT Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Sapphire Pure Platinum A85XT Motherboard3. Sapphire Pure Platinum A85XT Motherboard (Super High Res Gallery)4. BIOS and Overclocking5. Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra7. Synthetic: PCMark 78. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit9. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark10. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage11. Synthetic: 3DMark 1112. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.013. Synthetic: Drive Performance14. Synthetic: Memory Performance15. Real World: BluRay Performance with PowerDVD16. Real World: MKV 1080p Performance17. Real World: Flash HD Performance18. Real World: Video Encoding19. Gaming: Alien V Predator20. Gaming: Left4Dead 221. Gaming: Resident Evil 522. Gaming: F1 2012 (w/ HD7660D)23. Gaming: F1 201224. Gaming: Total War: Shogun 225. Gaming: Max Payne 326. Gaming: Dirt Showdown (w/ HD7660D)27. Gaming: Dirt Showdown28. Technical: Power Consumption29. Closing Thoughts30. View All Pages

For this review today we are pairing up the Sapphire Pure Platinum A85XT Motherboard with the Sapphire HD7950 Vapor-X Edition, which we reviewed back in August this year. We also test a small selection of games without the VaporX graphics card installed, relying on the HD7660D onboard graphics part of the processor.

For comparison purposes we test this system against a high end Core i7 970 system and a low end Core i3 2105 system using the same HD7950 Vapor X graphics card. This will give a comparison against a similarly priced Core i3 system and the benefits (if any) of spending more on a high end system for gaming.

We will use a mixture of the latest and some older games to give a complete overview of frame rate performance.

In some of the benchmarks and tests we will compare the AMD A10 5800k against a variety of desktop and mobile processors.

AMD A10 5800K System:

Processor: AMD A10 5800K (w/ 7660D graphics)

Memory: 8GB Patriot Viper @ 2,133mhz (10-11-10-32)
Cooling: Antec H20 620
Thermal Paste: Noctua NT H1

Motherboard: Sapphire Pure Platinum A85XT
Power Supply: Antec TruePower 550W
Case: Cooler Master Silencio
SSD: Kingston 90GB SSD Now & Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

Graphics: Sapphire HD7950 Vapor-X Edition (950 core/1250mhz memory)

Supplemental Hardware:
Optical: Asus USB 2.0 BluRay Drive
Monitors: LaCie 730 (IQ testing) and Dell U2410 x3

Comparison processors:
AMD A8 3870K
AMD A8 3850
AMD Zacate E-350
Atom D525 @ 1.8ghz
Turion X64 X2 L510 @ 1.6ghz
Core i7 3610QM
Core i7 2960XM Extreme Edition (Mobile)
Core i7 2630QM
Core i7 2640M processor
Core i7 2360QM
Core i7 2600K
Core i5 2500K
Core i5 2410M
Core i3 2105 desktop processor.

Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
PCMark 7
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
ATTO Disk Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
HQV Benchmark V2.
Alien V Predator
Left4Dead2
Resident Evil 5
F1 2012
Dirt Showdown
Total War: Shogun 2
Max Payne 3

Gaming systems for comparisons:
Intel Core i7 970 System
Processor: Core i7 970
Graphics: Sapphire HD7950 Vapor-X Edition (950 core/1250mhz memory)
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Thermal Paste: Noctua NT H1
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)

Intel Core-i3 2105 System
Processor: Intel Core i3-2105 3.10 GHz
Graphics: Sapphire HD7950 Vapor-X Edition (950 core/1250mhz memory)
Memory: 4 GB (2x 2GB) Kingston HyperX DD3 (1333 MHz)
Power Supply: Antec TruePower 550W
Motherboard: Asus P8H67-M Pro
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro.
Thermal Paste: Noctua NT H1
Drive: Kingston SSDNow V100 128 GB

Comparison Gaming System v HD7660D:
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K With onboard Intel HD4000
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme6
Cooler: Corsair H80
Memory: 8 GB G.Skill @ 1600 MHz 9-9-9-24
Power Supply: Corsair 750W
System Drive: Patriot Wildfire 120GB

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia.

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