Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 (The Board)3. Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 (Bios & Overclocking)4. Testing Methodology5. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Synthetic: PCMark 77. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 201110. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit11. Synthetic: AS SSD12. Synthetic: ATTO Disk Benchmark13. Synthetic: HD Tach 3.0.4.0.14. Real World: BluRay Playback with PowerDVD 1115. Real World: MKV Playback16. Real World: Flash HD Performance17. Real World: Media Encoding Performance18. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.019. Gaming: Resident Evil 520. Gaming: Alien V Predator21. Gaming: Lost Planet 222. Gaming: Total War Shogun 223. Gaming: Far Cry 224. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 225. Gaming: Home Front26. Gaming: Dirt 327. Closing Thoughts28. View All Pages

Sapphire have been releasing a steady stream of products this year, and today we are looking at their latest motherboard, the Pure Platinum Z68 which targets the enthusiast Sandybridge audience. Can the Sapphire product offer enough to stand out in such a crowded marketplace?

To this point in time, the Sapphire Pure motherboard range has not failed to impress. With a team of dedicated engineers tweaking their own designs they have been able to offer competitively priced motherboards with strong overclocking capabilities.

The Z68 range is today's hottest enthusiast grade motherboard, it is the successor to the P67 series, which suffered a lot of negative attention due to the very public Cougar Point SATA issues. The Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 is a dual bios motherboard with support for AMD Crossfire, USB 3.0, SATA 3, Bluetooth 2.1 and Lucid Virtua technology.

Specification	Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 Motherboard
CPU	Support Intel LGA1155: Intel Core i7 /i5 / i3 series processors
BIOS	AMI BIOS, 16Mb Flash ROM
Memory	4 slots 240-pin DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600+ non-ECC ,un-buffered memory.16 GB Max.
Graphics	Intel® HD Graphics
Expansion Slots	3 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots 3 x 32-bit PCI slots
Storage	4 x Serial ATA III 6Gb/s connectors 4 x Serial ATA II 3Gb/s connectors Supports HDDs with RAID 0, 1,5,10 functions
Audio	Realtek ALC892 HD Audio CODEC with 8-Channel
Ethernet LAN	Marvell 88E8057 PCI-Express Gigabit LAN
Form Factor	ATX, Size 12″ x 9.6″
OS support	Windows 7 (32/64) bit

The Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 board arrives in a shiny box with the name of the product in the middle. Specifications and product support are listed along the bottom of the package.

Sapphire have been rather mean with their motherboard bundles, and the Pure Platinum Z68 hasn't changed our views. You get a short, well written manual, a software and driver disc, a backplate, and some SATA cables.

The motherboard is dark with a mixture of red and blue ports/slots catching the eye. The heatsinks are black.

The board supports up to 16GB of memory, across 4 slots. To keep the install as simple as possible, there is a removable sticker on the ports which instructs the end user to use the blue ports first, then the black.

The board has four SATA 2 ports (black), and four SATA 3 ports (red) along the bottom. There is support for Raid 0, 1, 5 and 10.

There are three PCI E ports on the Pure Platinum Z68. The two top blue slots are PCI E 2.0 x16 and when paired up in Crossfire drop to x8 link speed. The bottom PCI E x16 slot (grey) operates at x4 link speed. There are three black PCI slots in this area.

The Pure Platinum Z68 has a dual bios switch. Beside this is a power and reset button, as well as a reset CMOS button for emergency situations.

There is a Debug LED display readout to help when troubleshooting problems. Below this are 8 USB header connectors and the front panel header, which is clearly labelled so you don't need to refer to the rather skimpy manual.

The Sapphire motherboard has 5 x 3 pin header connectors for system fans, as well as a CPU fan header.

Sapphire have included a 4 pin molex power connector at the bottom of the PCI slot area, this apparently helps with power delivery under multiple GPU load, although we never needed to use it during testing. Just as well as it is in a rather awkward position for easy access.

The I/O panel of the motherboard offers the following connectivity options:

• 4x USB 2.0 port
• 2x USB 3.0 port
• 1x VGA(D-Sub) port
• 1x HDMI port
• 1x DisplayPort 1.1a
• Audio I / O ports
• Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR by Atheros AR3011
• Single Link DVI
• PS/2 KB/MS combo port

All in all this is a very well equipped panel, with native support for both digital and analogue video out connectors.

The Sapphire board is well made and they are using solid capacitors with super low ESR and high heat resistance for added stability under overclocked situations. The board uses Sapphire Diamond Chokes which improve load regulation. These are ‘patent pending' designs with integral heatsink. Sapphire claim they are more power efficient than a standard choke.

The overall board layout is good, although we found a minor problem, in that a large graphics card in the first PCI E slot will cover the outer most SATA 3 ports. Cables can still be fitted, as they run in parallel with the PCB, but getting access might require the removal of the graphics card.

A long graphics card can also cause a fitting issue for one of the 3 pin fan headers (auxfan) as can be seen in the images above.

Unfortunately Sapphire have yet to move to a UEFI configuration, settling for a traditionally designed BIOS.

It is split into easy to understand tabs, dealing with all aspects of the performance and configuration.

Many of the most used options are straightforward to access and easily changed to suit individual demands. It isn't the prettiest of BIOSES we have used, but it was stable during our review period.

Overclocking is all handled from the performance section of the bios, which is split into three separate sections.

We used ADATA 2,133mhz performance gaming memory in this system build, but the Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 board failed to automatically detect and configure the memory, unlike the ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3 which we reviewed last week.

There is a dedicated voltage section, which is self explanatory and well laid out.

Validation is available here.

At the default validation, the system decided it was best to run the 2133mhz memory at 1333mhz, which isn't ideal.

We tried using the XMP profile, which was correctly detected by the system to run at 2133mhz. Unfortunately the system wouldn't post properly.

We manually tried downclocking the memory to 1866mhz with timings as shown in the image above. The system posted and booted fine, passing our stress tests. We used other GSKILL 2133mhz+ memory and the bios wouldn't post at the highest settings either.

By using one of the new Intel air coolers, we managed to get the system stable at 4.6ghz. With more powerful air cooling 4.8ghz+ was possible, in a similar fashion to the ASROCK Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3 which we reviewed last week. We are trying a few reviews without using our favourite Noctua NH D14 air cooler as we have received many emails from people recently saying they won't be spending £70 on a cooler.

Hopefully our reviews published within the last couple of weeks have highlighted just how easy it is to overclock the i7 2600k, with very modest (and inexpensive) air cooling.

OC Validation is available over here.

Test System:

Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k @ 4.6ghz
Motherboard: Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 Motherboard
Cooler: Intel XTS-100H
Memory: ADATA 2200mhz @ 1866mhz 9-9-9-32
Graphics cards: Sapphire HD6950 Toxic Edition (Synthetic tests in HD6970 mode).

Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Silverstone Raven 03
Monitors: LaCie 730, Dell U2410 x3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Intel 510 SSD 250GB

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise (64-bit)
FRAPS Professional
SiSoft Sandra
VLC Player
CPUz
GPUz
CPUID Hardware Monitor
Cinebench R11.5 (64-bit)
Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 Ultra
Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6.5
CrystalDiskMark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
PCMark 7

Games:
Resident Evil 5
Dirt 3
Lost Planet 2
Far Cry 2
Alien V Predator
Home Front
Total War: Shogun 2
Tom Clancy H.A.W.X. 2

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Nikon D3X with R1C1 kit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests across five closely matched runs and averages out the results to get an accurate median figure.

The Sapphire driver/software disc is split into four sections and is easy enough to use. Windows 7 64 bit installed compatible LAN drivers during the initial setup phase.

One of my favourite features of having a Sapphire branded motherboard is the support for the excellent TRIXX utility, which offers an array of continually updated temperature and fan/voltage settings on the desktop.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

For this test we set the Sapphire HD6950 Toxic edition to ‘HD6970' bios mode, enabling the extra shaders.

Overall performance is already impressive. We noticed a little bit of microstuttering which lowered the minimum frame rate a little, even though it was barely noticeable.

PCMark 7 is the latest benchmark suite from Futuremark and it includes 7 separate test suites combining more than 20 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming.

An overall score of 5249 points is very strong indeed, and gives early indicators of solid all round performance.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

For a single graphics card this is undoubtedly a great result, with the system scoring just under 23,000 points. This is aided by the overall performance of the overclocked i7 2600k processor and fast DDR3 memory speeds.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. We used performance settings for this benchmark.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

Very good results again in this intensive Direct X 11 benchmark, indicating strong gaming performance with the newest engines.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Overall performance is good, and much as we would expect from a Z68 system with a Core i7 2600k @ 4.6ghz. Memory scores aren't quite as impressive as we achieved on the ASRock Fatal1ty board, as we could get the ADATA sticks running faster at 2,133mhz.

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

A score of 8.37 in Cinebench shows that this system is easily capable of powering through rendering duties, matching the performance of the more expensive 6 core processors at reference clocks. An overclocked 2600k is a hell of a chip for serious duties.

AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.

The Intel 510 SSD scores 476.93 MB/s read and 312.45 MB/s write from the sequential tests as detailed above. Very strong overall scores, and as good as we have seen from this particular drive.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

ATTO is a great disk benchmark test and these results are superb. The Intel 510 SSD performs at the highest level on the Sapphire Z68 motherboard with some of the best results we have seen.

I have been using HDTach for many years now and always find it is an invaluable benchmark to ascertain potential levels of performance. HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get as close to the physical performance of the device possible.

HD Tach 3.0.4.0. doesn't always give perfectly accurate results especially with SSD drives, but when combined with other tests, it can be a useful benchmark to run.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the Blu-Ray Disc of The Day The Earth Stood Still starring Keano Reeves. We are using the hardware acceleration of the discrete solution to help reduce overall processor load.

Overall performance is as expected, class leading. Thanks to the overclocked processor and high performance memory speeds, there are plenty of free CPU cycles left for multitasking in the background.

Many people who have media systems will be familiar with the Matroska (.mkv) file format which is often used for high definition video. In this test we will be using VLC Media Player to play a 1080P MKV file of Tron Legacy (ripped from our BluRay disc) while recording CPU usage.

Great results again, averaging just 7 percent CPU use.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online. Full hardware acceleration is enabled.

Flash HD can be a difficult test for some systems, but the overclocked 2600k eats through it with relative ease. Overall performance is supported well by the Toxic 2GB card.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

We are using a 3.3gb MKV file today at 2 hours and 12 minutes in length. We are converting to a final output for an Apple Media Player, a real world situation facing many people.

The Sapphire system took only 8 minutes and 16 seconds to complete the encoding task which is one of the best results we have seen. To give an idea of the relative speed, an Intel ATOM system will take over 1 hour and 15 minutes to complete the same encoding process.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here

	Sapphire HD6950 Toxic 2GB
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

A strong set of results for this hardware, scoring 196 points out of 210. We have not seen any noticeable IQ improvements with recent drivers from AMD, but they are already leading the way.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

No problems powering this Direct X 10 engine at high resolution, averaging almost 120 fps.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.

This is an intensive Direct X 11 engine, however the system powers through this without a problem, averaging over 50 frames per second.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.

After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.

Another taxing Direct X 11 engine which can prove difficult to run effectively at these settings. Our system built around the Sapphire Z68 motherboard however has no problems maintaining a 30> frame rate at all times.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

All settings are pushed to mixed high/ultra settings as shown below.

Total War Shogun 2 is a very demanding game and our testing shows positive results for the Sapphire system build, averaging 45 frames per second.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

No problems powering Far Cry 2 at our chosen settings, averaging almost 80 frames per second, even with 8AA enabled.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

A popular game which runs exceptionally well on Nvidia hardware. These results are impressive however, averaging 80 frames per second.

Homefront is speculative fiction, set in a near-future, post peak oil world that features a significantly diminished United States, and a united Korea that has built a massive alliance in East Asia. The Gate Corporation (a major private military company) also plays a minor role. The game focuses on the collapse of the United States, subsequent occupation by the Greater Korean Republic—a united Korea under the rule of Korea—and the American Resistance that fights said occupation. The player is invited to join the American Resistance, “using guerrilla tactics, commandeering military vehicles, and utilizing advanced drone technology”.

Homefront’s PC version has been outsourced to Digital Extremes, a Canadian developer responsible for numerous Unreal Tournament games and Bioshock ports. Frank Delise, the executive producer of the PC version has stated that the PC version of the game will feature exclusive content and dedicated servers. Additional exclusive features include clan support, DirectX 11 graphics, and first person vehicle cockpits.

Home Front received a lukewarm reception when it was released, but it is actually one of my favourite first person shooters released in the last year. This system averaged 53 frames per second, dropping to 34 in the most stressful environments.

Dirt 3 is a rallying videogame and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters, although the “Colin McRae” tag has been completely removed from this iteration (having been previously been removed from American versions of previous games in the series).

Good results with Dirt 3 at these high settings, averaging over 57 fps at 1080p with all the image quality settings cranked. Frame rates never dropped below 40, even during intensive sections of gameplay.

The Pure Platinum Z68 is another strong release from Sapphire, and over the course of a week we didn't experience any instability. The motherboard is fairly easy to overclock, although it needs more user intervention than the fantastic ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3, which we reviewed last week.

The only real weakness right now for Sapphire is their bios configuration. Personally, I am not that bothered about the lack of UEFI, but the bios will demand more experimention and fine tuning of settings. We have also noticed that the Sapphire product is slightly less compatible with some memory sticks. For instance the ADATA performance gaming memory we used with the Fatal1ty @ 2133mhz would only run at 1866mhz on the Sapphire board. There is clearly room for improvement on this level, but we are confident it will come with time. On a more positive note, the Sapphire board was exceptionally good at recovering from over zealous settings, and we never had to use the reset CMOS button once.

The Pure Platinum board layout is excellent, although we noticed with a long graphics card in the first slot that one of the fan headers was very tight and might not be usable with a fatter cooler in place. The last two SATA 3 ports will also be hidden under the GPU cooler, but thankfully they are horizontally mounted so hard drives can be fitted beforehand, without having to fumble for the location.

Connectivity is first class, with a myriad of USB 2 and 3 ports, Bluetooth and onboard HDMI, DVI, Displayport and VGA output supported.

Pros:

• Overclocks well.
• Very stable and recovers well if pushed too high.
• Connectivity is first class.
• performance is not lacking.

Cons:

• Bios isn't as user friendly as leading products.
• we experienced some memory compatibility issues at higher speeds.

Kitguru says: A strong release from Sapphire, but we hope their development team continue to work on the bios as they lag behind leading designs from companies such as Asus and Asrock.

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