ATI's acquisition by AMD opens a huge market opportunity for ATI's Express chipset and CrossFire. One of the first boards to hit the shelves is Sapphire's continuation of its PC-A9RD480 motherboard featuring the new core logic consisting of the RD580 (AM2 version) and the long-anticipated SB600 SouthBridge. Behind the pretty first impression is a somewhat unusual layout with clearance for 3-slot cooling solutions even in CrossFire configuration, a spectacular Azalia-compliant on-board audio and no less than three separate SATA-RAID controllers on board. We took the PC-AM2RD580 and ran it through the paces - but with a GeForce 7800 GT SLI configuration rather than a CrossFire configuration. The combo turned out to be blazing fast and rock solid but with little overclocking potential. And then, there were the minor quibbles....
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