SAPPHIRE Technology has just announced its first mainboard based on the new
APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) architecture from AMD.
As a result of close collaboration with AMD, SAPPHIRE will introduce
the SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W mainboard through its Global
channel.
The SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W is a mini-ITX mainboard
featuring the E350 (Zacate) APU from AMD. Zacate is the first
generation of APU - a combination of CPU and GPU computing
technologies onto a single die to improve the performance of both
visual and data-intensive tasks. For the first time it combines
high-performance serial computing and parallel graphics processing
cores on a single chip. The SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W also
uses the companion Hudson-M1 (A50M) Chip from AMD.
The graphics engine of the SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W
delivers a full DX 11 feature set over a choice of three display
outputs of which any pair can be used concurrently. Maximum
resolution is 2560 x 1600 over the D-Sub, and 1920 x 1080 over HDMI
or the DVI-D output. The SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W can
display HD video content, and will accelerate content in the latest
web browsers and Microsoft Office environments as well as in specific
supported applications.
Up to 4GB of system memory can be installed, using industry standard
1.5v DDR3 (1066/800) un-buffered SO-DIMMs. Hard drive and optical
drive support is provided by five SATA III ports with 6Gb/s transfer
rates, and there is an additional eSATA connector on the rear panel
with 3Gb/s transfer rate for external drive access.
I/O connections include eight USB 2.0 ports ports supporting transfer
speeds of up to 480Mbps (four on the rear panel plus four by onboard
header), plus two USB 3.0 ports on the rear panel (backward
compatible with USB 2.0), supporting transfer speeds up to 4.8Gbps.
One Gigabit Ethernet connection is provided by a Marvell 88E8057
Gigabit controller, and Bluetooth support by an Atheros AR3011
all-CMOS, single chip solution compatible with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.
The on-board Audio support includes 8-channel High-Definition audio
and optical S/PDIF output.
In addition to all the on-board features, the SAPPHIRE Pure White
Fusion E350M1W has two expansion slots. It has one PCI-Express 2.0
x16 connector with x4 bandwidth, designed for use with an expansion
VGA card, and one general purpose Mini PCI-Express 2.0 x1 connector.
Despite the huge feature set, the SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W
features very low power consumption. Its very compact mini-ITX (170 x
170mm) format is ideal for integration into small format or embedded
systems. It supports Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems
for a new class of performance from highly integrated systems.