Conclusions

Anyone looking for an Intel upgrade then this most definitely is the way ahead.  What has been shown above, the results in the professional graphics arena have now taken over what AMD have to currently offer.   Pricing on both Woodcrest CPU’s and 667 ECC DDR2 memory is extremely competitive so the purchasers of new equipment do have a choice finally.   For the AMD user looking to upgrade or move onwards to something new, you too should seriously consider what has been shown here today.

This mainboard took everything in its stride which we threw at it.   In one experiment we fully replaced the CPU’s, memory added in a couple of PCI-X cards and swapped out the graphic card.  On post the system perfectly booted into Windows finding all the new hardware with not one blue screen to be seen.   On reboot of we went with a few other benchmarks to stretch the system just to see if it would crash.  Nothing!   It remained completely stable throughout several back to back runs of SPEC ® 9.   Full kudos indeed to the engineering team at Supermicro in this area.

Within the professional graphics arena, we saw both ATI and NVIDIA romping away in their scores.  Cinebench 9.5 saw the illusive 20 second barrier being well and truly trashed.   14 seconds in Multiple CPU Render is rather quick to say the least.   Short and Long tests in SPECapc MAX 7 following suit in record times.   To watch these tests being completed so quickly was a sight to behold.   In SPECviewperf ® 8.1 and 9 both cards ran away with the tests out performing every Non SLI system shown up online to date.   With NVIDIA’s Quadro FX 3500 just about completely dominating every benchmark thrown at the system.   It would have been interesting to see what sort of result returns would be gained with the mainboard with the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5500 and ATI FireGL V7350!     Time will tell, here we are sure!  

The system supplied to us from Boston, most certainly was extremely well built, with their meticulous attention to detail in tucking away and neatly tying down all the cables out of sight maintaining a full through flow of air.   An engineer’s dream of what a system should be like!   For the careful eyes looking at the pictures a neat addition to the perspex airflow sleeve with the addition of a flexible sleeve to ensure that airflow is evenly distributed along and throughout the DIMMS as there could be a tendency to get very hot indeed when fully under load. Though with correct ambient room temperatures; this is not the case as we found throughout all the review tests.

Penultimately and not to rain on Supermicro’s parade of glory today, this most certainly has been unequivocally one of the best mainboard reviews in the professional graphics arena we have undertaken.   This mainboard has enough to keep the upgrade enthusiast and long term professional users happy for a very long time to come.   It has shown that Supermicro still maintain their dominance in the market place as one of the best constructors of mainboards and total bespoke systems (on request).  

Finally what more can we say; if you are in any doubt of what to buy next then look no further!   What we have shown today, it is most certainly and currently the road ahead to insurmountable sheer raw power which is going to take (and last) the purchaser with a platform on the path to sound, reliable and upgradeable solution for some time to come.

Page 1 - Introduction and Mainboard
Page 2 - System Configuration and Benchmarks
Page 3 - PCMark 2005 Advanced
Page 4 - Cinebench 9.5 (32 Bit and 64 Bit Results)
Page 5 - SPECapc for 3ds max™ 7 & SPECviewperf® 8.1
Page 6 - SPECviewperf® 9 - Windows 32 Bit Results
Page 7 - SPECviewperf® 9 - Windows 64 Bit Results
Page 8 - Conclusions