Sapphire PURE Platinum A75 (PT-A8A75) Pro Reviews

It has all the right features, but we were disappointed by its performance in our benchmark tests

It makes implicit sense for Sapphire, one of AMD's staunchest supporters, to release an FM1-based motherboard complementing the nascent range of A-series APUs. The £100 PURE Platinum A75 is an enthusiast-orientated board that's solid in most respects, though a UEFI front-end for the BIOS and a second x16 mechanical PCIe slot, availing two-card CrossFireX, would definitely help broaden its appeal.Competitive in the benchmarks when run with a range-topping A8-3850 APU in the socket and exhibiting rock-solid stability with a 133MHz master clock, Sapphire sweetens the deal by bundling in a USB 3.0 front-mounted box and a coupon for the tasty DiRT 3. Undeniably strong in certain areas, most notably for enthusiast-grade features, the Sapphire PURE Platinum A75 is a reasonable companion for an A-series APU. A lack of CrossFireX support and part-UEFI BIOS put it behind some of the competition, however.

Sapphire Technology may not be the most well known vendor of motherboards (the A75 Pure Platinum, for example is their only Hudson-D3-based product at the moment) or have the same popularity as their graphics cards at the moment, but the Pure Platinum A75 is another great motherboard. The Pure Platinum A75 is even more compelling than the Pure Black P67 was for Intel Sandy Bridge. The Sapphire Pure Platinum A75 has the standard features that other Fusion A-Series/E-Series motherboards have like SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0, but the extras include Bluetooth 2.1, AMD Dual Graphics / CrossFire, Mini PCI Express x1, and other great connectivity options from this motherboard. There are also enthusiast-friendly features on this motherboard like the integrated power/reset switches and a button to clear the CMOS. The overclocking potential out of the Pure Platinum A75 is also great.

For what it is designed for, the Sapphire Pure Platinum A75 is a solid nice mainstream board with a little extra bling that makes it stand out among the competition. The overall design for the board is nice with a few minor issues such as the SATA port placement and the 8-pinATX power connector placement. Other than that, there is no major problem with the board’s layout.

Paired with an A8 3850 and some other mid range components you could easily have a great Multimedia rig/light gaming machine for around $400. To me, this makes all of this hardware worth it! Not only that, but for the cheap price of the Sapphire A75 Pure Platinum, you'll be picking up a great board with Dual BIOS, a good Layout, and a Mini PCIe X 1 slot!

Unfortunately because of the relative newness of the Llano Lynx chipset there is a price-premium attached to this board. At £100 it's quite pricey for what should essentially be the basis for a cheap PC. With the APUs themselves costing around £100 as well, that's quite a total platform cost.

OK, with all of that out of the way let me give you my final impressions. This board has proven to have really good performance at a reasonable price. What this means is that if you’re on a budget, and you just need something that will perform really well, then this is the board for you. It was very easy to install and the BIOS is easy to navigate. The included features and applications perform really well and will give you lots of options for tweaking and performance enhancement. This board is able to use the embedded graphics from the processor so you don’t even need to purchase a discrete graphics solution if you don’t plan on doing anything too graphically intensive.