Sapphire to launch ATI RS480/SB450 motherboard
 

WE KNOW Sapphire more as a graphic card manufacturer than as a motherboard maker but this company always had a motherboard division. We cannot claim that this division was too successful so far, but these boys won't give up till they make things right.
Sapphire has a new motherboard based on the Enthusiast Radeon Xpress chipset formally known under RS480 Northbridge and SB450 south bridge codenames. We are not surprised with a fact that this board should be very overclockable as it's made with overclockers in mind. We know that ATI managed to do some serious overclocking with this chipset and we saw one of those boards in action back in January at CES.

The SB450 Southbridge is pin compatible with an old RS400 and it brings faster USB and Azalia audio support. The board itself is socket 939 Athlon solution with dual channel 128 memory support for DDR 333/400. Naturally, the board will feature four DIMM slots. The board design includes PCIe Gbit/100/10 LAN, Firewire, and high def audio with Realtek ALC880 chip.

The board has one PCIe 16 lane graphic card port, three PCIe 1X slots, S-ATA PCIe Raid, and a VGA and DVI connector.

We forgot to mention that this chipset actually has decent graphic chip integrated inside of the north bridge and you will be able to play games such as Far Cry and Unreal Tournament 2004 just with this integrated graphics.

So, overclockers, please keep your eyes open as you might actually like this one. Sapphire will demonstrate the board at CeBIT and should be available shortly after this Germany based show. µ
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21583