Sapphire PURE PI-A9RX480 - ATI's Chipset for the AMD Enthusiast

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ATI will soon be unleashing their Grouper, Jaguar, Crossfire AMD and Crossfire Intel chipsets! AnandTech takes a closer Look.

At the heart all of the new chipsets and boards are Radeon Xpress 200, whether single GPU or Dual GPU, with integrated graphics or with discrete graphics only. You can find more information on Radeon Xpress 200 in ATI Radeon Xpress 200: Performance, PCI Express & DX9 for Athlon 64 . The North Bridge chips do vary between AMD and Intel solutions, but any of the North Bridge chips can be combined with one of several South Bridge chips from both ATI and ULi.

Last fall's introduction of the ATI AMD chipsets featured the SB400 south bridge. The Sapphire and upcoming Radeon Xpress 200 introductions combine the north bridge with the ATI SB450 south bridge, which features High Definition Azalia audio for both AMD and Intel. This is the first chipset to bring High Definition audio to AMD. The SB 450 also supports PCI-e Gigabit LAN, standard SATA 150, and has improved USB burst performance compared to the earlier SB400 chipset. We will see full SATA 2 support and a completely reworked USB controller in the SB600, which will launch in the 4th quarter of this year.

Sapphire PURE PI-A9RX480 - ATI's Chipset for the AMD Enthusiast