Sapphire Pure CrossFireX PC-AM2RD790

February 15, 2008 | 08:27

Tags: #64 #790fx #am2 #article #athlon #crossfirex #evaluation #overclocking #performance #phenom #review

Companies: #amd #pure #sapphire #test

Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0

For our Photoshop Elements test, we used a selection of 400 three megapixel photographs taken in a variety of surroundings using the batch file processing function in the Elements Editor. We performed all of the auto fixes, including Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Colour and Sharpen before resizing the image to 640x480 and saving as a high quality JPEG.

Adobe Photoshop Elements

Quick Fix, 400 Photos, 2048x1536 to 640x480 HQ .jpg

  • Sapphire CrossFireX 790FX
  • Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6
  • MSI K9A2 CF
  • Asus M2N32-SLI
  • 413.0
  • 362.0
  • 400.0
  • 412.3
0
100
200
300
400
Time in Seconds (lower is better)

Adobe Photoshop results don't actually fare too well on average. While the Gigabyte did churn out some mammoth performance in this test, the Sapphire performance is very similar to the nForce 590a and the AMD 790X boards that are generally much more affordable.

File Compression & Encryption:

Our file compression and decompression tests were split into two halves to cover a broad spectrum of performance. The first test we ran was to compress and encrypt the MPEG-2 source file from our video encoding test with the highest quality compression ratio. Secondly, we compressed and encrypted the folder of 400 photographs used in our Photoshop Elements test with the same compression settings.

Large File Compression & Encryption

WinRAR 3.71, Multithreaded, 276MB source file

  • Sapphire CrossFireX 790FX
  • Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6
  • MSI K9A2 CF
  • Asus M2N32-SLI
  • 152.3
  • 147.3
  • 155.7
  • 156.3
0
25
50
75
100
125
150
175
Time in Seconds (lower is better)

Small File Compression & Encryption

WinRAR 3.71, Multithreaded, 400 2048x1536 Photos

  • Sapphire CrossFireX 790FX
  • Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6
  • MSI K9A2 CF
  • Asus M2N32-SLI
  • 193.3
  • 148.7
  • 204.7
  • 207.7
0
50
100
150
200
Time in Seconds (lower is better)

The performance is again not bad – it’s better than the AMD 790X MSI results but not quite up to the seriously fast Gigabyte 790FX.

File Decompression & Decryption:

The two RAR archives created during the compression and encryption tests were then decompressed and decrypted.

Large File Decompression & Decryption

WinRAR 3.71, Multithreaded, 276MB source file

  • Sapphire CrossFireX 790FX
  • Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6
  • MSI K9A2 CF
  • Asus M2N32-SLI
  • 17.7
  • 21.3
  • 18.0
  • 18.7
0
5
10
15
20
Time in Seconds (lower is better)

Small File Decompression & Decryption

WinRAR 3.71, Multithreaded, 400 2048x1536 Photos

  • Sapphire CrossFireX 790FX
  • Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6
  • MSI K9A2 CF
  • Asus M2N32-SLI
  • 39.3
  • 28.0
  • 39.7
  • 41.0
0
10
20
30
40
Time in Seconds (lower is better)

Again, we see slightly faster and certainly consistent performance from the Sapphire.

Xvid Encoding:

We tested video encoding performance using VirtualDub-MPEG version 1.6.15 and a multithreaded version of the Xvid codec, along with the LAME MT MP3 encoder for encoding audio. We did a two-pass encode of a 15-minute 276MB digital TV recording with a target file size of 100MB.

Xvid Encoding

VirtualDub MPEG-2 1.6.15, Xvid 1.2 beta, 276MB .mpg to 100MB .avi

  • Sapphire CrossFireX 790FX
  • Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6
  • MSI K9A2 CF
  • Asus M2N32-SLI
  • 914.0
  • 927.7
  • 923.0
  • 918.3
0
250
500
750
1000
Time in Seconds (lower is better)

The Sapphire outperforms the other boards in Xvid encoding—even the Gigabyte 790FX board—although not by much, only a few seconds over the several minute test.
Discuss this in the forums

Posted by bubsterboo - Fri Feb 15 2008 09:07

Heatpipe looks surprisingly similar to my dfi:
http://www.ocxtreme.org/main/images/dfip35t2rpix/dfip35_1.jpg

OH, "
While previous Sapphire boards have been considerably, well... naff, the latest Pure CrossFireX 790FX has been backed by DFI - and just like other DFI boards, it's kitted to the teeth for enthusiasts!"
That's why :p

Posted by phuzz - Fri Feb 15 2008 10:25

But it's not white! And did the first board really get so hot that the PWM heat sink glowed? I guess it would save on LEDs in the case...

Posted by Amon - Fri Feb 15 2008 10:46

Quite an expensive board for so few measured advantages. The note about the omission of BIOS information from the manual gave me a chuckle :)
phuzz
And did the first board really get so hot that the PWM heat sink glowed?
Only a Prescott can do that.
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