Sapphire Pure Black X58 Review

Performance Analysis

In Crysis, the Pure Black managed a minimum frame rate of 34fps and an average frame rate of 54fps. These are some of the fastest results we’ve seen, although the Asus Sabertooth X58 was faster still, with a minimum frame rate of 37fps and an average frame rate of 60fps.

The Pure Black also recorded a score of 1,492 in our image editing test – this is a fine result and only slightly slower than the Sabertooth, which managed 1,501. Meanwhile, the Pure Black’s score of 3,281 in our video encoding test was 100 points or so short of the best X58 boards we’ve seen, but it was better than the Sabertooth, which recorded 3,223. The multi-tasking test result of 1,430 was disappointing, although it was only 41 points behind the Sabertooth’s result. Overall, the Pure Black scored 2,067; two points more than the Sabertooth.


SATA performance was a mixed bag, however. The ICH10R-powered SATA 3Gbps ports performed as expected with an average read speed of 246MB/sec. The Marvell 9128-powered SATA 6Gbps ports were brilliant, though, recording an amazing 370MB/sec read speed.

When it comes to tweaking the Pure Black, the bundled Trixxx overclocking software allows for fairly extensive voltage and frequency adjustment within Windows. However, we decided to use the BIOS for our overclocking. Dropping the CPU multiplier of our Core i7-980X to 12x and decreasing the memory multiplier, we set about determining the maximum stable QPI frequency. This proved to be a challenge, as any attempt to increase the QPI beyond 150MHz with stock voltages resulted in a failed boot, and the CMOS needed to be cleared before the Pure Black would boot again. Thankfully, an on-board speaker is included, which provides useful audio cues during the booting process.


After increasing the voltages to the same level favoured by most X58 motherboards, we were eventually able to persuade the Pure Black to boot stably with a QPI of 195MHz. However, we were unable to go beyond this frequency without Windows 7 failing to load, or Prime95 crashing.

We used a Southbridge voltage of 1.4V, a chipset voltage of 1.425V and an IOH ICH I/O voltage of 1.65V initially, although we found that we could reduce these settings to 1.3V, 1.35V and 1.55V respectively. While 195MHz isn’t terrible, it’s significantly lower than the 220MHz of which the best X58 boards are capable.

Unfortunately, we were unable to overclock our 980X to its usual 4.4GHz air-cooled maximum, as we had to resort to using a CPU multiplier of 23x and a QPI of 187MHz, with anything higher proving to be unstable. This resulted in a CPU frequency of 4.3GHz, which required a vcore of 1.4V. This overclock added just 1fps to the minimum and average frame rates in Crysis.


However, our image editing test saw a 350-point boost to 1,843. The video encoding test score increased from 3,281 points to 4,059 points and the multi-tasking test also saw a notable increase of nearly 200 points to 1,614. The overall score increased from 2,067 to 2,505 – just 24 points behind the Sabertooth, despite the Pure Black’s lower overclock.

Conclusion

The Sapphire Pure Black X58 isn’t a groundbreaking motherboard. It’s quirky and not the best when it comes to overclocking, as it loses out by 25MHz in the QPI frequency overclocking stakes. Even flashing the BIOS is more difficult than on many cheaper X58 motherboards. It’s far from a bad product, but the major issue is its price. It’s £50 more expensive than the Asus Sabertooth X58, and it fails to justify the higher price, despite offering an additional 16x PCI-E slot and Bluetooth support.

• Performance
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• -
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• 8/10

• Features
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• -
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• 8/10

• Value
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• -
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• 7/10

• Overall
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• -
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• 8/10

Score Guide