Verdict: Great for single graphics cards or CrossFire

Sapphire isn't new to the motherboard market, but only recently have we been able to buy Sapphire-branded motherboards in the UK. Nevertheless, Sapphire has already made a good impression and is quickly developing a reputation for producing high-quality and highly overclockable products.

The PURE CrossFire II is based around the ATi Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition chipset, which means it has two 8x PCI-E slots capable of supporting two graphics cards in CrossFire mode. If you only have one graphics card then a shunt card must be fitted into the Master slot, which enables the Slave slot to work with the full 16 PCI-E lanes.

The ATi SB450 Southbridge doesn't support S-ATA II, and the CrossFire II only offers four RAID-capable S-ATA ports and two EIDE channels. There are also only four USB 2 ports and two FireWire ports, but the Intel HD Audio codec, which is handled by a Realtek ALC880 chip, compensates for this apparent stinginess to some extent. While the high-speed PCI-E slots are only separated by one of the two 1x PCI-E slots, at least they don't obstruct the S-ATA ports, as on the ECS PA1 MVP Extreme.

Unlike all the other LGA775 boards in this Labs test, the PURE CrossFire II uses DDR, not DDR2 memory, which could be handy if you're upgrading from an older system with DDR and can't afford to buy new RAM. Unusually for a Sapphire motherboard, the BIOS doesn't allow you to increase the CPU voltage, but even so, we succeeded in raising the FSB of our 3GHz Pentium D 830 test CPU to 230MHz, which boosted the clock frequency to 3.45GHz. Despite its DDR memory, it was also faster than the ECS PA1 MVP Extreme out of the box, although it won't overclock as far.

Although the 975X chipset provides more features and greater headroom for overclocking than the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition, both 975X boards in this Labs test are expensive. If you're on a tight budget, but still want good performance and CrossFire support, then the PURE CrossFire II is worthy of consideration.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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