Sapphire A4-A985 (Ati A4) Motherboard Review
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Sapphire A4-A985
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| Chipset |
Ati A4 |
| Processor |
Pentium 4 FSB 400/533 MHz
Celeron FSB 400 MHz
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| Memory |
PC1600/2100 |
| HDD |
UltraDMA/100 |
| Additional |
Audio AC'92
6 USB
integrated video |
| Price: |
~73$ (Price.ru) |
Until recently, little has been know that ATI produces chipsets for desktop systems. Only a narrow circle of computer reviewers were able testing motherboards based on the Ati A3 and A4 chipsets. But then things starting changing to the better and such boards began appearing in the open retail. In fact, the list of manufacturers cooperating with ATI is not that long: Fic, PC Partner and Sapphire.
Regretfully, there is still too little online information on ATI's chipsets; it lacks even on the company's official website (but for the brief specifications). So we'll break up that traditions and dwell on the new chipset. Note that the chipset ATI A4 features the North Bridge Radeon IGP 340 or Radeon IGP 330. The former supports Intel processors having 100 MHz and 133 MHz buses, with the latter only 100 MHz bus (i.e. either Celeron or Willamette).
As for the South Bridge, ATI has had to cope with various problems. As a result, first boards (like our Sapphire A4-A985 in question) were released with the combination Radeon IGP + VIA VT82C686B. Certainly, the bandwidth between the bridges (the PCI bus) is not high as per today's measures.
Only recently ATI has announced availability of its own South Bridges IXP200 и IXP250 in which the support for USB2.0 and Ethernet LAN was implemented.
The integrated graphics core merits a separate consideration. This is the core RV100 or Radeon 7000, which features the following characteristics:
- The core is 128-bit and supports 3D/2D graphics;
- Hardware Motion Compensation and IDCT technologies, hardware MPEG2 (DVD) decoding;
- Shared memory buffer size between 8 and 256 MB;
- 24-bit 300 MHz RAMDAC core;
- Support for the simultaneous image display on the monitor and TV;
- Integrated TV-converter, support for Macrovision, composite and S-Video TV-outs, support for Pal and NTSC;
- Maximum resolutions 2048x1600x 32 bit;
- Support for DirectX and OpenGL.
Coming back to Sapphire company, let me share one suspicion with you. It's highly probably that boards for it are manufactured by PC Partner. It's up to you to decide how our board in question and PC Partner A4AS4-985 strongly resemble (even the names are almost identical :) See for yourselves.
PC Partner's A4AS4-985 board
Boards built on the Ati A4 chipset are aimed primarily at the value sector of the market where they face a strong confrontation with the produce of SiS, a leader in this area (I mean, boards based on the SiS650 chipset).
Sapphire A4-A985 specifications
| Sapphire A4-A985 |
| Processor |
- Intel Pentium 4 (Willamette/Northwood) with the bus speeds 400/533 MHz;
- Intel Celeron (Willamette/Northwood) with the bus speed 400MHz;
- Socket 478; |
| Ati A4 chipset |
- North Bridge Radeon IGP 340;
- South Bridge VIA VT82C686B;
- Interbridge link over the PCI bus |
| System memory |
- Two 184-pin slots for DDR SDRAM DIMM
- Maximum memory capacity up to 1GB
- Support for PC1600/2100 memory types |
| Graphics |
- AGP slot has support for the 4x mode;
- Integrated video core Radeon 7000; |
| Expansivity options |
- Five 32-bit PCI Bus Master slots;
- Four USB 1.1 ports (2 integrated +2 additional);
- Integrated audio AC'92 v2.1 |
| Overclocking options |
- No |
| Disk subsystem |
- 2 channel UltraDMA/100/66/33 Bus Master IDE (with support for up to 4 ATAPI-devices)
- Support for LS-120 / ZIP / ATAPI CD-ROM |
| BIOS |
- 2MBit Flash ROM
- Award BIOS Phoenix with support for Enhanced ACPI, DMI, Green, PnP Features |
| Miscellaneous |
- One FDD, two serial and one parallel ports, ports for PS/2 mouse and keyboard
- STR (Suspend to RAM) |
| Power management |
- Standard 20-pin power supply socket ATX (ATX-PW) |
| Monitoring |
- Processor temperatures, voltages and rotation speeds of the 2 fans are all monitored. |
| Dimensions |
- ATX form factor, 225mm x 305mm (8.85" x 12") |
Package bundle
The board comes bundled with a drivers CD, a very thin user's manual, and a header with one COM2 port. Besides, a standard set of cables is enclosed.
The user's manual is a thin booklet (16 pages) that lists only the basic information. The contents of the CD is not rich either: drivers for the chipset, and Drive Image 4.0, PartitionMagic 6.0 SE, PC-Cillin 2002 software suites All in all, a standard kit for a value motherboard.
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