Sapphire Pure Black P67 Motherboard Review

At the beginning of this review we pondered the question, what makes an enthusiast level motherboard something an enthusiast would want?  The answer to this has been complicated by the marketing departments are given more control over product design so they can efficiently sell what is being produced.  In the case of the Sapphire Pure Black P67 we have a great motherboard design that tries its best to fit the enthusiast mold but turns out to be rather limited in its abilities. 

There are several great features on the Sapphire Pure Black P67, the most recognizable of these is the HydraLogix 200 SoC.  This chip enables you to control a multi GPU configuration without relying on manufacture specific technologies such as SLI or Crossfire.  In fact it does this without the proprietary bridges, assuming the lanes all pass thru the Lucid chip.  Sadly the chip is not completely seamless and will often require that you install the Hydra driver after installing the latest drivers from the card manufacture.  Some other great features include two extra SATA3 connections from the onboard Marvell chip and onboard Bluetooth.  Both are highly desirable regardless of what you intend to do with this motherboard.

Overall performance was great and while we did have some issues reaching our desired overclock the performance gains at 4.5Ghz is nothing to be disappointed about.  It is hard to tell if the vdroop issue we uncovered can be resolved with a BIOS update or if the "out of frequency" problem specific to the network controller has a workaround but we plan to keep a close eye on these things as they progress.

4 way video card support
HydraLogix 200 chip on board
Bluetooth support
4x SATA3 connections
Voltage Test Points
Debug LED and Temperature Display

Issues with overclocking
Hydra chip requires driver
Onboard heatsinks are not heatpipe connected