Sapphire ventures once again into Intel territory

Sapphire is well known for their AMD based product but they seem to have had a another change in heart by announcing a Platinum Z68 motherboard.

Designed with gamers and overclockers in mind, this board sports the best of both worlds if I might say. Supporting not only three PCIe 2.0 16x slots (with Crossfire and SLI support) and equipped with a dual BIOS, power and reset switch as well as a debug LED, Sapphire has got most of the actual market covered, or at least the most demanding.

Other features include support for four DDR3 of up to 16GB +1600 and up to 32GB “when suitable modules become available.” In addition to the three PCIe 2.0 16x, Sapphire has also included three Legacy PCI… makes you wonder if Sapphire lives in the past sometimes.

As for the headers at the rear I/O you get four USB 2.0, two USB 3.0, Bluetooth connectivity, Gigabit Ethernet, 8-channel HD 7.1 audio, SPDIF support, and a choice between VGA, DVI, HDMI and Display Port for video.

As for internal headers, in addition to the usual, you get four USB 2.0, four SATA II 3Gbps and four SATA III 6Gbps ports with RAID 0/1/5/10 support. Sadly no internal USB 3.0.

Furthermore overclockers will also find voltage test pads on the edge of the board, and the more novice overclockers will be happy to have the included MainBoard TriXX software for Windows-based overclocking.

Nothing has been said on pricing and availability yet.

Source