The battle for Z77 motherboards is very hot as of late. We have tested a slew of them and have seen more creative innovation than ever before. ASUS and Gigabyte tend to be the leaders when it comes to new products, but we have seen companies like MSI, Biostar and Elite Group step up their game in both aesthetics and features. Today we have a Sapphire Z77-based board on the bench, and will see how it competes with these others.

Intel recently released Ivy Bridge and it seems to finally be proliferating retailer’s shelves. For those not familiar with Ivy Bridge, it is Intel’s next generation processor spawned from Sandy Bridge. Intel’s Tick Tock strategy brought new architecture with Sandy Bridge (Tock) and Ivy Bridge (Tick) brings a die shrink to 22nm with increased transistors. The new transistors called Tri-Gate 3D bring more efficiency with less voltage, but they do run much hotter than Ivy’s older brother Sandy.

Sapphire is well known in the community primarily for graphics cards, but they have also been making solid motherboards for some time. We tested their last intro with the X79 platform and the product was good. Let’s see if Sapphire keeps this trend going with their latest release, the Pure Platinum Z77/K.