Sapphire have been working hard to deliver some premium motherboards recently such as the Pure Black 990FX and X79 motherboards. However, now they have altered their focus towards the value segment of the market coming up with a value board from AMD's FM1 A55 platform as well as the Sandy Bridge H61 LGA 1155 platform.
First up is the FM1 A55 offering from Sapphire. The A55 Pure White board is a low feature design aimed at the simple PC user. With only a single PCI-E 16X lane this board only supports a single discrete video card in addition to the integrated GPU you could also use should you choose an FM1 APU over an FM1 CPU. It also includes two PCI-E 1X slots and a legacy PCI slot for additional connectivity. The A55 chipset provides six SATA II 3GB/s ports as there is no need for SATA III speeds on such a value orientated motherboard.
Display outputs include HDMI, DVI, and D-Sub. Other connectivity features include 6-channel HD audio, gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports, 4 rear USB 2.0 ports and four front. Four DDR3 DIMM slots are provided support memory up to frequencies of 1866MHz.
Whilst the Pure Platinum H61 is also a budget model. Featuring a single PCI-E 16X lane (at 2.0 speeds), Two PCI-E 1X lanes and three legacy PCI slots (2 of which are provided by a third party controller). The H61 chipset natively provides four SATA II 3GB/s ports while a third party chip provides another two SATA III 6GB/s ports.
Due to the choice of the H61 chipset the board supports only two DIMM slots up to 16GB in dual channel. Other connectivity includes 8-channel HD audio, gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports, and a number of USB 2.0 ports. Display options include HDMI, DVI, and D-Sub.
Pricing is not know yet for either but we estimate the A55 offering should come in at about £55 and the H61 offering at £65.
Source: TechPowerUp, VR-Zone
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