Sapphire PC-A9RD580 Specification
Specification
| Sapphire PC-A9RD580 | |
| Board Feature | Implementation |
| Northbridge | ATI Xpress 3200 |
| Southbridge | ATI SB450 |
| Processor Support | All AMD Socket 939 microprocessors including Athlon 64 FX Athlon 64 X2 |
| Memory Support | DDR DDR-400 4GiB total, 4 slots, ECC support |
| Graphics Support | PCI Express 2 PEG16X slots ATI Crossfire |
| PCI Express | 1 x PCIe 1X |
| PCI Conventional | 1 x PCI 2.3 slot |
| Networking | Marvell 88E8052; PCIe Gigabit Ethernet |
| Firewire | VT6307 on PCI; 2 FW400 ports |
| Audio | Realtek ALC880; HD Audio, 8-channel Jack sensing |
| USB | SB450; 8 ports USB2.0 |
| Disks | ATI SB450; 4 SATA150, 2 ATA133 IDE, RAID0,1 2 x Silicon Image 3132; 2 SATA300, RAID0,1; 2 internal |
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Sapphire take a different tack with RD580 than ASUS did, with the main differences in expansion, disk I/O and audio.
Sapphire place just a single PCI Conventional slot on the PC-A9RD580, limiting your peripheral expansion compared to the ASUS (and other RD580 boards available). More on that when we look at the board's layout.
Disk-wise you get SB450 controller four SATA ports and the pair of IDE ports, with a duo of Sil3132s (on PCIe) providing two SATA2 ports each. That gives the board eight in total with RAID available on each controller.
As far as audio goes, Sapphire supply a competent HD Audio CODEC (Realtek's ALC880) but supply digital connectivity via S/PDIF I/O, rather than S/PDIF and Toslink output only as seen on the ASUS.
So the Xpress 3200 IC and a pair of PEG16X slots is really all they have in common, Sapphire choosing a different set of extra ICs -- and therefore feature set -- than ASUS.
It's not quite as able as the A8R32-MVP, then, on paper. Maybe the layout can swing things back in Sapphire's favour.
