AMD 770X Motherboard Duel

Sapphire AM2RX780 Rear I/O

The Sapphire AM2RX780 is marketed as a budget motherboard, and its rear I/O reflects that.

• PS2 keyboard and mouse
  
• Optical S/PDIF out
  
• Four USB 2.0 ports
  
• One RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet socket
  
• S/PDIF Coaxial In/Out ports
  
• One RS232 serial port connector
  
• Six 3.5mm analogue audio jacks providing 7.1 channel surround sound, plus microphone and line inputs

The inclusion of the serial port may seem bizarre but people actually do request them still! The Coaxial in/out connections also allow by-passing of the mediocre onboard sound codec, and having both in and out is a rare inclusion, however we’d have much rather Sapphire included extra USB ports, or perhaps an ESATA.

BIOS

The AM2RX780’s BIOS takes some getting used to; Sapphire attempts to lay it out more intuitively, but it's actually not that easy to when it comes to use it. Overclocking features are found in Power User Settings, but are very limited, only allowing voltage changes to the CPU, VDIMM and NB (although whether it's CPU-northbridge or AMD 770X it isn’t made clear!)

CPU voltage is adjustable by 0.025V, which is a reasonable level of adjustment, and VDIMM goes up by 0.05V – again reasonable, but not inspired. Bizarrely, the CPU clock is adjustable all the way up to 600, a ridiculously high setting that you’d struggle to reach with any hardware setup, and madly optimistic for a budget board. The very high voltages are marked as red to indicate their chip frying ability, although there’s no middle ground indication between the standard and danger voltages.


From the same screen you can alter the memory clock, although the rest of the memory settings are, frustratingly, on a completely different screen, and are sadly not context sensitive according to the memory clock. The usual four memory settings are all present, as well as command rate, and the full list of timing settings.


Sapphire has included a basic CPU fan control system, although the level of control available is pretty poor, with only full speed and idle temperature speed settings, and no option to control the speed of three-pin case fans. Like the Abit board, there’s no option to flash the BIOS from a USB memory stick, or to save your BIOS profile. In addition, once again, the BIOS is full of acronyms and abbreviations, and unless you really know what you’re doing, tinkering in it is a fairly confusing experience.