Hong Kong-based Sapphire Technology has announced its latest A-series Fusion APU-based mainboard, with the Pure Platinum A75 taking advantage of AMD's latest chip.
It combines a quad core CPU, the northbridge and DirectX11 graphics in one handy package.
The full ATX board naturally includes HD, Blu-Ray and stereoscopic 3D support, and outputs via DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. Noises are provided via the standard configuration on board HD 7.1 audio.
Storage connectivity comes in the shapely form of four onboard USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports and five SATA 6G ports with AHCI and RAID support. An eSATA connector features on the rear panel.
Compatability
One of the big advantages of the A-series APU is its graphics compatibility. Plug in a Sapphire HD6600 or HD 6500 graphics card and the performance is combined with the onboard graphics to give a maximum 175% graphics boost.
Up to 16GB of DDR3 memory is currently supported, but this can be expanded to 32GB when suitable technology becomes available. Gigabit LAN and Bluetooth are also present and correct, so you'll have no problems connecting to the net or slowly transferring music and photos to your phone.
Overclocking fiends will find a digital debug display and push button BIOS reset, as well as a dual BIOS for "experimentation".
Sapphire's proprietary Mainboard TriXX software is provided for performance optimisation. The whole thing's finished with a black multilayer printed circuit board and gold plated connectors for the USB 3.0 and LAN ports.
The Sapphire Pure Platinum A75 is in production now, and will be available through the usual retailers. Pricing and release date are yet to be confirmed.
