The first company to offer us a retail-ready motherboard with AMD's A85X FCH, Sapphire presents a couple unusual features on its Pure Platinum A85XT. An open-ended PCIe x4 slot is the most noteworthy change, though the fact that it's up top means you probably won't find a graphics card there. The PCIe x16 slot beneath it loses half of its connectivity to the second x16-length slot whenever a card is installed there.
The Bluetooth controller found on the Pure Platinum A85XT’s I/O panel is an unusual bonus among value-priced motherboards. Similarly unusual is the mini-PCIe x1 slot right in the middle of the Pure Platinum A85XT’s PCB, labeled for both PCIe and mSATA connectivity. One of the chipset’s eight SATA connections is tied up by the slot, reducing the number of standard SATA ports to seven.
Power, reset, and CLR_CMOS buttons along the Pure Platinum A85XT’s bottom edge aren’t unusual, nor is its Port 80 diagnostics display. On the other hand, we're far less accustomed to seeing a BIOS selector switch among those bottom-edge features. We've previously had little luck with auto-switching functionality, so we're ecstatic to find a manual switch on the Pure Platinum A85XT.
It almost appears that Sapphire designed this board to support some degree of form factor modularity. For example, a front-panel audio connector located above the second PCI Express x16 slot suggests a microATX-oriented design. As a result of its placement, you'll have to drag your audio cable up over the top of the board. Fortunately, even if your case suffers from short cable syndrome, it should still reach without a problem.
A bottom-edge USB 3.0 connector is really our only true layout concern. It’s far enough beneath the second graphics card slot to clear most GPU coolers, and far enough beneath the bottom PCI slot to clear most on-card circuits, but its distance from typical front-panel ports is a bit of a stretch for the cables included with some cases.

Anyone who’s unable to use the Pure Platinum A85XT’s front-panel USB 3.0 header with their case’s integrated ports might instead try installing the included 3.5” bay adapter. Failing that, the company also includes a slot bracket for the USB ports. Six internal SATA cables are also included in the Pure Platinum A85XT’s installation kit.
- 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


These sound like great ideas for a platform-oriented story. In fact, Thomas and I have discussed doing a piece on memory and Trinity. Maybe we could expand that to include an exploration of graphics and processor bottlenecks, too. Thanks for the feedback!
You still have never posted your 1GHz+ clocked GPU results.
I am also upset that you didn't run the gaming benches with the OCed RAM. I want to know how a PROPERLY configured setup like this could perform.
8% gains approx from going to 1866 over 1600, does higher clocks after this have any effect?
How does OCing the GPU part limit your CPU clock OCs? or is the heat not too bad ?
So many questions unanswered....
Sneaky, lol. Now he's going to be downvoted.
Penalizing a company over a PCB's color is asinine and petty. Even if you have a case with an acrylic window, do you stare into your PC all day and night? If so, that is trend I don't care for.
There are much more important things to worry about, like quality, price, and features, to name a few...
"Adoby Creative Suite"
just one?
who cares, good job to crash and the rest of the crew . . .
edit: i had to fix a typo . .oh karma!
Heh, apparently, editing motherboard round-ups in a Thanksgiving food coma is not conducive to catching typos. Got that one as well--thanks looniam!
You still have never posted your 1GHz+ clocked GPU results.
I am also upset that you didn't run the gaming benches with the OCed RAM. I want to know how a PROPERLY configured setup like this could perform.
8% gains approx from going to 1866 over 1600, does higher clocks after this have any effect?
How does OCing the GPU part limit your CPU clock OCs? or is the heat not too bad ?
So many questions unanswered....
These sound like great ideas for a platform-oriented story. In fact, Thomas and I have discussed doing a piece on memory and Trinity. Maybe we could expand that to include an exploration of graphics and processor bottlenecks, too. Thanks for the feedback!
Well, in days gone by we'd have had green or gold boards. To be perfectly honest though, unless you're going to have a side window, you're not likely to care about the PCB colour. I'm far more interested in features and performance than the aesthetics, personally.
I thought that the brown PCB meshed decently with the black and grey color scheme utilized by most of the rest of the board. Hey, at least it doesn't look like those ugly low end FoxConn boards
Here is a relevant quote from a randomly-googled article:
Longtime Elder Scrolls fans hoping Skryim would take full advantage of the PC's strengths: unfortunately we have to disappoint you. Game director Todd Howard says besides higher quality textures and bigger resolutions, it "looks the same" as on consoles, and it's "mostly a DirectX 9 game in terms of how the shaders work."
He does note DirectX 11 support is a possibility down the line, however: "When it comes to DirectX 11 there are things they get us for free, like performance gains. You’re going to get performance gains out of it versus an older version. But the specifics DX11 does, like tessellation and all that kinda stuff, we aren’t taking advantage of that right now. That doesn’t mean we won’t in the future. We aren’t right now because we want to author it so it looks great.”
On the bright side, the new engine means Skyrim looks quite lovely as is, just nothing mind-blowing, which it could be. No doubt the modding community will improve the situation before long, though.
He wasn't asking for proof of what DX is utilized by Skyrim, he was asking where in the article was it claimed that Skyrim used DX11.
As far as performance goes, there doesn't appear to be any difference worth noting (which I'd expect).