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

AMD released their A10 5800K at the beginning of October and we analysed the processor when paired up with Asus F2A85-V Pro and Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 motherboards. Sapphire recently sent us their PURE Platinum A85XT motherboard which incorporates a dual BIOS switch, onboard mSATA slot, 2 way Crossfire support and seven SATA 6 GB/s ports. On paper it ticks the right boxes, but can Sapphire offer a serious challenge to market leaders Gigabyte and ASUS?

We have reviewed almost all of Sapphire's motherboards in the last 2 years and there is no doubting their high grade engineering standards. If we had a single issue with the products however it would be their BIOS development, which at times has been flaky, especially when dealing with the fastest DDR3 memory.

First let us have a quick recap of the AMD A10 5800K processor. The A10 5800K is a 32nm CoC with four Piledriver cores and a Cayman GPU.

This is no Bulldozer style core however, the focus is on getting power consumption under control and AMD have placed focus on the VLIW4 architecture to improve graphics efficiency. AMD don’t want these new chips to be excessively priced either – the AMD A10 5800K should ship in the UK at a price around £94.99 inc vat.

The differences between Trinity and Llano are also significant.

AMD have created a new architecture with a higher transistor density to improve overall performance. The onboard 32nm HD7660D graphics runs at 427mhz core and 1066mhz memory. The 512MB of GDDR3 is connected via a 128bit memory interface.

The HD7660D has 8 ROPS and 384 Unified shaders.

An AMD diagram overview of the current APU range. The A10-5800K slots in right at the top of the chart, with 4MB of cache, a base clock speed of 3.8ghz and a turbo speed up to 4.2ghz. The maximum DDR3 supported is said to be 1,866mhz but as we will find out later, with the right motherboard this is ready to be broken. The ‘K’ moniker, as always, is an indication that this chip is unlocked, ideal for the overclockers out there.

Sapphire motherboard box artwork is always very similar – following a futuristic black and silver scheme. The Pure Platinum A85XT hasn't broken the mould, but it is quite attractively designed.

Sapphire include 6 SATA cables, a USB 3.0 adapter, quick installation guide, software DVD installation disc and I/O backplate. Sapphire don't bundle a full, printed user manual, instead including it on the optical disc in printable format. I find this a continually disappointing aspect of buying a Sapphire motherboard, because unless you have a secondary system you have no means of reading the full PDF user manual while building the system.

As we would expect, the Sapphire Pure Platinum A85XT is built to very exacting standards. It is a black PCB design with high quality gold plated connectors for USB 3.0 and LAN ports. They are using high reliability Japanese solid capacitors in this design. There is a multi phase PWM voltage regulation circuitry incorporated for both the APU and memory modules.

Sapphire use their trademarked Diamond Black chokes with cooler that have featured on some of their high end graphics cards. The chipset is passively cooled and there are low profile heatsinks on the VRM modules to ensure that oversized CPU coolers can be installed without problem.

The Pure Platinum A85XT measures 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm conforming to the ATX standard. It isn't the most attractive looking motherboard, especially when side by side with the Gigabyte F2A85X UP4 which is black and grey coordinated across the ports and slots.

The 6+2 phase PWM controller is maintained by the International Rectifiers IR3567A voltage regulation chip.

At the bottom of the board is a diagnostic read out which can help with troubleshooting. Again you need to refer to the user manual which is saved in digital format on the optical disc. Printing this out would be a wise first move.

The Pure Platinum A85XT is a dual channel motherboard with four slots supporting up to 32GB of DDR3 memory. Gigabyte officially claim their board will support up to 64GB of memory.

The Sapphire board will support 1066/1333/1600/1866mhz memory, but as we see later in the review, it is possible to push this further.

The Pure Platinum A85XT has two PCI-e graphics card slots which can be used for Crossfire (no SLI as Sapphire are a primary AMD partner). A single card in the secondary slot will run at x16 speed, however if you add two they downgrade to x8 bandwidth. This doesn't really have any effect in the real world however as we have seen with previous test results.

There is also a PCI-e x4 and two PCI-e x1 slots to support older devices. If you pay careful attention you can see a onboard mPCIe/mSATA slot between the two primary graphics card slots. This is useful to have, but installed in a rather unusual position on the PCB. We have reviewed a handful of mSATA devices already, and this one in particular is worth consideration.

Along the bottom of the motherboard is a RESET CMOS button, next to a RESET and POWER button. Sapphire have incorporated a dual BIOS configuration on this board, and it is easily to switch between these by sliding the Bios_Sel button left or right.

There are plenty of fan header ports on this board, with several positioned along the bottom row, handy for specific chassis designs.

The 8 PIN CPU power header is between the top PWM heatsink and the rear I/O panel as shown above. You can see the power delivery chokes and Solid Capacitors in the image above right (next to the heatsink).

There are no less than 7 SATA 6 Gbps ports on this board, with three of them mounted vertically. I would have preferred all of these to be installed parallel to the PCB. There is support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 and JBOD. The front panel header is positioned just below the SATA ports.

The rear I/O panel has four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, DisplayPort, VGA and DVI out, Gigabit LAN, BlueTooth Module, Combo keyboard PS/2 and mouse port, Optical S/PDIF out and 8 channel audio ports.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.

Sapphire are using the latest version of their QBIOS configuration. We used Patriot 2,133mhz Viper memory and the system defaulted to 1,600mhz, posting first time.

We will look at the performance tab in a little more detail shortly, but this is where all the main system tuning is handled. We like the Sapphire BIOS layout, as the frequencies, voltages and temperatures are always visible along the bottom of the display, regardless of the page you are currently on. Very useful, especially for monitoring APU temperatures.

The Advanced panel offers a dedicated hardware monitor section, which expands on the detail shown along the bottom of the BIOS. There are also options to tune various sections of the board via this panel.

The Chipset panel gives access to the North Bridge.

The Boot Menu offers adjustments to boot drive priority and network booting. It works painlessly.

The final two panels offer control over security settings, restoring to default (or user default) settings and FLASH utilities. You can also restore a corrupted BIOS from the other BIOS, which may prove useful in emergency situations.

As we mentioned earlier in the review, Sapphire BIOS configurations in the past have proven to be slightly unreliable with high speed DDR3. Not a problem with this BIOS on the Sapphire Pure Platinum A85XT as we were able to get the PATRIOT memory booting at 2,133mhz by simply selecting the relevant option in the bios.

It was also straightforward to get the system posting at 4.6ghz, by simply increasing the CPU ratio to 46 and tuning the voltage settings a little.

We also managed to tighten the Patriot memory timings to 10-11-10-32 in the BIOS with complete stability.

System validation is available over here.

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.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Performance from the A10 5800K is quite good, and it manages to outperform the Core i3 2105 in the Cryptographic test. Memory bandwidth is quite poor however, scoring around the 12 GB/s mark with the Patriot memory set at 2,133mhz with tight timings.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

The final score of 4191 points is balanced, with the solid state drive and graphics card rounding out the individual results.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

These results aren't groundbreaking, but they indicate that the A10 5800K would be suitable for light rendering work. It also outclasses the Core i3 2105.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

All systems deliver good overall results, with the Core i7 970 system significantly out in front with an average of 74.4 frames per second. The Sapphire A85XT powered system today averages 65.2 frames per second, still perfectly smooth.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The system scores 18,282 points which is a good score, although the A10 5800K is holding back the overall performance, scoring 10,583 points. The overclocked Sapphire HD7950 Vapor X scores 24,133 points which is around 6,000 points behind that achieved in our long term Core i7 970 system (around 30,000 points).

The overall scores are closely matched to the Core i3 2105 system.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

The overall score gives a good indicator that the system would easily manage the latest Direct X 11 titles without a problem. That said, the A10 5800k scores significantly less than the Core i7 970, dropping the overall score by around 1,400 points. The Sapphire AMD system is slightly faster than our Core i3 2105 system however.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here

	Sapphire HD7950 Vapor X Edition
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

A score of 196 points is class leading right now, the ideal solution for high definition media playback on a big screen.

A very important aspect of overall system performance is down to drive performance. We use two of our favourite benchmark programs today. CrystalDiskMark and ATTO Disk Benchmark. We measure performance from the Patriot Pyro SE 240GB SSD on this page.

Performance from the system is very good, averaging around 430-450 MB/s from the Pyro SE 240GB drive when the compressible data setting is enabled. Not the best result we have seen with this drive, but still impressive.

Excellent results from the ATTO Disk Benchmark, averaging around 550 MB/s read and 505 MB/s write.

MaxxMem2 PreView is a useful, free program to rate memory performance. It can be downloaded over here.

We used the same Patriot memory configured at 2,133mhz in a Core i3 2105 system and the AMD system on test today. As we noticed earlier in the month, the AMD A10 platform seems to be memory bandwidth restricted. These results are mirrored in the Sandra benchmark, earlier in the review today.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new extended Bluray Disc of Lord Of The Rings.

No problems handling 1080p bluray discs, averaging only 12 percent CPU time.

The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard Multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed. We use the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP).

We ripped our BluRay disc of Sniper Reloaded to 1080P MKV and use Windows Media Player to playback the file.

The system averaged 30 percent CPU time in this test, which leaves plenty of cycles free for other duties.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online. Full hardware acceleration is enabled.

No problems powering high definition flash media, thanks to the hardware acceleration.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

These are really very impressive results indeed, especially when hardware acceleration is enabled. A final time of 14 minutes is actually less than 30 seconds slower than the more expensive AMD FX 8350 with hardware acceleration disabled.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews.

The overall results are good with this Direct X 11 intensive engine. This particular engine is specifically dependent on the graphics card.

Like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected, who develop severe psychosis and exhibit zombie-like tendencies. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale. The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players’ performance and adjusts the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game’s five campaigns together.

This is an older title that we thought we would throw in, as it will be slightly more dependent on the processor at these settings. We can see the Core i7 system pulls out way in front, and the Core i3 2105 system takes up the bottom position. Absolutely no problems from any of the systems however, with super smooth frame rates all round.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

Another older title which shows the real world benefits of a Core i7 system as the title is more reliant on the processor. Still good results all round and perfectly playable on all the systems.

F1 2012 is a video game developed by Codemasters. It is based on the 2012 Formula One season, and is the sequel to F1 2010 and F1 2011. It is the fourth Formula One game developed by the Codemasters studios after the company renewed its licence to develop the official games of the series.

The game features all twelve teams and twenty-four drivers competing in the 2012 season, as well as the twenty circuits — including the brand new Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas — included in the championship.

First we test this game with the onboard HD7660D graphics built into the A10 5800k.

We used a 1080p setting with 2x anti aliasing enabled. We selected the built in ‘medium’ image quality preset to get a balanced result.

Fantastic results from the AMD A10 5800K at 1080p with 2 AA, averaging 39 frames per second, and maintaining a 30fps> frame rate at all times. The 3770k with HD4000 by comparison struggles to break 20 fps at all. Not even close.

F1 2012 is a video game developed by Codemasters. It is based on the 2012 Formula One season, and is the sequel to F1 2010 and F1 2011. It is the fourth Formula One game developed by the Codemasters studios after the company renewed its licence to develop the official games of the series.

The game features all twelve teams and twenty-four drivers competing in the 2012 season, as well as the twenty circuits — including the brand new Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas — included in the championship.

A great game to play and it runs very smoothly on all systems. The Core i7 system maintains a solid 60 fps throughout at these settings, dropping only one to 58 fps, which is much higher than the AMD or Core i3 systems.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

At 1080p all the systems are closely matched as performance is tied into GPU performance. At 720p resolution, the processor and system bandwidth becomes a more integral part of the score, and as such the Core i7 970 system manages to expand the differential by a considerable margin.

Max Payne 3 is a third-person shooter in which the player assumes the role of its titular character, Max Payne. Max Payne 3 features a similar over-the-shoulder camera as its predecessors, with the addition of a cover mechanic, while also retaining much of the same run-and-gun style of gameplay. Max Payne 3 also marks the return of bullet-time in action sequences, for which the franchise is notable.

In bullet-time it is possible to see every bullet strike an enemy in detail. New to the series is a “Last Stand” mechanic, which gives the player a grace period after losing all health during which time the player may kill the enemy that wounded them in order to continue playing, however this mechanic is only usable if the player has one or more bottles of painkillers in their possession.

A great game which I still enjoy playing and it runs particularly well on the Core i7 970 system, averaging almost 60 frames per second. The AMD A10 system drops the average frame rate to 48, although it is still perfectly smooth. The Core i3 2105 system takes last position, although the differences are negligible.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

First we test this game with the onboard HD7660D graphics.

We used a 1080p setting with 2 x MSAA and the ‘medium’ image quality preset.

The game is playable on the AMD A10 5800K at these settings, and it isn’t on the Intel 3700k with HD4000 graphics. The experience on the AMD A10 5800k is fantastic.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

We selected a high combination of settings using the ‘ULTRA' profile, as shown above.

The performance from the AMD system is smooth, averaging over 30 frames per second at all times. The Core i7 system pulls out in front by around 7 frames per second. The Core i3 system takes last place, by a couple of frames per second.

Power consumption is very important today, with people more aware of the rising costs of living. Adopting a more efficient computer will reduce the cost across a year. That said, someone running an overclocked, overvolted system will not be that concerned with power consumption.

We used a calibrated meter to measure the power at the wall. No monitors were factored into the readings. All systems included the same graphics card, memory configuration and hard drive population.

We measured wattage at the socket when running Cinebench R11.5 64 bit which loads all cores to 100% utilisation. The graphics card was inactive during the reading.

Power consumption of this system is around 130 watts under load, and 53 watts when idle. This is an extremely efficient system.

This is our third review featuring the AMD A10 5800k since it was released earlier this month. The 5800k is ideal for a user who doesn't want to spend extra money for a discrete graphics card. As a low cost choice for a high definition multi media center or entry level gaming system it also makes a lot of sense.

The onboard HD7660G can generate smooth frame rates with titles such as F1 2012 and Dirt Showdown at 1080p with reasonably high image quality settings. We also wanted to supplement these initial findings by incorporating the Sapphire HD7950 Vapor X discrete solution and we have been impressed with the overall findings.

As the foundation for a high definition media center we have no hesitation recommending the AMD A10 5800k, the image quality produced from the new processor is almost at the same level as a stand alone discrete solution, often costing 3 or 4 times as much money.

As a stand alone gaming system, the AMD A10 5800k outperforms the Core i3 2105, similarly priced at the budget end of the gaming spectrum. It would be possible to use the A10 5800k without a discrete solution for some time, opting to upgrade with a HD7770, HD7870 or HD7950 later, when funds permit.

The Sapphire Pure Platinum A85XT motherboard is quite honestly better than I thought it would be, because I know from past experiences that early Sapphire BIOSES can be a little temperamental, especially when it comes to pairing up with high speed DDR3 memory. No such problems with this particular board as we used Patriot 2,133mhz memory today, after some manual intervention in the BIOS.

In regards to layout, we only have a few changes we would like to see in a next revision board. Sapphire could design the SATA ports on the board to be in parallel with the PCB, there is no need for three of them to be mounted vertically. This can cause an installation issue with the cables, especially if two graphics cards are in action. Also, I am still slightly bewildered as to why Sapphire felt it was a good idea to position the mSATA slot between the two primary graphics card slots.

Connectivity of the Pure Platinum A85XT is first class. There are no shortage of USB 2.0, USB 3.0 ports and there is also a Bluetooth adapter included, always a welcome addition.

Sapphire motherboards are normally slightly more expensive than competing products from Gigabyte or Asus, however you can currently buy this motherboard from Overclockers in the UK for £104,99 inc vat. This is a identically priced to the excellent Gigabyte GA-F2A85X-UP4 which we reviewed earlier this month.

The Sapphire motherboard has actually some additional features over competitor motherboards, such as Bluetooth support and the useful (if strangely positioned) mSATA port. We also highly rate the motherboard specific TriXX software tool which can be used in Windows for monitoring duties.

Pros:

• Very stable.
• BIOS is a good step in the right direction for Sapphire.
• 2,133mhz memory support was flawless.
• Can compete with ASUS and Gigabyte products.
• mSATA support.
• Bluetooth support.

Cons:

• A couple of unusual PCB design decisions.
• Sapphire supply the indepth user manual in digital form, on the disc. This needs to change.

Kitguru says: A very capable A85 motherboard and a good indication that Sapphire engineers are improving upon their early BIOS configurations.

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