We don’t see too many motherboards from Sapphire (the company is best known for its graphics cards). So, we were pleasantly surprised at the simplicity of its Q-BIOS.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to increase the multiplier ratio to overclock our APU, nor were we able to reboot after changing the processor core and northbridge ratios simultaneously. Instead, all of our overclocking efforts were limited to the APU's stock 38x ratio, and we used nothing other than the platform’s reference clock to control frequency.

Without a way to determine our memory kit's secondary timings, we were forced to manually configure them using screenshots from another motherboard’s firmware. That’s not going to be possible for most of Sapphire’s customers.

Our CPU core operated at 1.45 V under full load with the Pure Platinum A85XT set to 1.425 V and “CPU Loadline Enabled." We only reached 4.4 GHz on a CPU known to run at 4.5 GHz, but we already know our problem was a result of multiplier control issues, rather than voltage. If you want to alter the APU's multiplier without running into the same issue we encountered, switch to software-based overclocking or wait for Sapphire to release a firmware update.

We haven’t focused much on user profiles lately, except to note when they’re missing. Sapphire doesn’t lack this feature entirely, but does limit it to a single register.
- AMD's Answer To Ivy Bridge-Based Core i3
- ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6
- FM2A85X Extreme6 Firmware
- Asus F2A85-V Pro
- F2A85-V Pro Firmware
- ECS A85F2-A Golden
- A85F2-A Golden Firmware
- Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4
- F2A85X-UP4 Firmware
- MSI FM2-A85XA-G65
- FM2-A85XA-G65 Firmware
- Sapphire Pure Platinum A85XT
- Pure Platinum A85XT Firmware
- Test Settings And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3
- Benchmark Results: F1 2012
- Benchmark Results: Skyrim
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Benchmark Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Overclocking
- Of Six Socket FM2 Boards, Two Rise To The Top
Create a new thread in the UK Article comments forum about this subject
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0 Hideswamprat , 26 November 2012 18:26Does the hybrid crossfire thingymajig work (and if so how well) on the desktop APUs? It could be an interesting addition to the discrete graphics 'conundrum' by keeping some of the graphics value of the APU
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0 Hidespare_flash , 28 November 2012 04:16Ha, I followed the link expecting to read an article about a motherboard that would hold 6 processors. I need new glasses.
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0 HideMacheri , 31 March 2013 08:18Does is it really influence the performance? It's nice to have some more connectors but doesn't worth paying 60$ more for an expensive motherboard like these.