3.33GHz Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series - The King of the Hill

Test Systems Set-Up

Over the last year we have looked at many mainboards supporting Intel Nehalem EP and UP CPU's.  So we took the best of the bunch formulised a standard build throughout for the CPU's and this way the results would be extremely  clear to the reader.

Having extensively covered in our earlier outing of Intel's S5520SC mainboard the target market remains within the same boundaries.  Though we have to note that Supermicro  supply out to many famous Tier 1 and Tier 2 OEM's to enhance their solutions.  You will be very surprised at just who some of the Tier 1 & 2 suppliers really are. 

Many self build corporate and studio users maintain the philosophy to utilise one mainboard which provides them with an effective cost performance solution.  Time is money as too are extra peripherals needed to supplement a mainboard.  Once the mainboard has reached end of life in the usage it was built, mainboards of this nature then find them stripped down and placed into a  2U chassis as a dedicated server or render node.   Therefore the life span of these Mainboards and supporting CPU’s is extremely good, which brings us back once more to exceptional value for monies.  Deviating slightly the server capabilities of these mainboards are very good with so many added value features that have been listed, therefore whilst we have covered these board heavily in a workstation scenario it must not be forgot that implementation of a server will be very good indeed.

What has been requested by so many was that of ATI's FirePro V8750 (latest 64-bit WHQL driver of 8.683) and a solitary Western Digital 300GB VelociRaptor.  Therefore in order to appease the many we complied with the requests asked of us.

Therefore our system builds today look like so;-

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Intel EU for the supply of the 3.33GHz Intel® Xeon® W5590's Nehalem EP® CPU's, S5520C and X58BP mainboards shown within the Test Systems 1 & 2.  

Supermicro for the supply of the X8DA3 and X8SAX Mainboards shown within the Test Systems 3 & 4
 
Crucial Memory  for the DDR3 1333MHz Unbuffered ECC Memory, thank you for pulling out the stops here.
 
AMD for the supply of the FirePro V8750 professional graphics card.  

OCZ for the supply of the new "Z" series PSU within Test System 3.
  
Akasa for the supply of the Omega Chassis, HSF's and Freedom PSU

Western Digital for the supply of the 300GB VelociRaptors.

With the support and help of all the companies involved.   It gives you the reader a new choice on upgrade paths that many of you look for here with the performance ratio’s the system has to provide and notwithstanding the professional graphic cards from each of the respective companies. 

Systems Integrators, OEM’s and VAR’s should contact all companies directly for pricing and availability of all components.   Members of the public should contact their respective suppliers requesting the parts directly.

Benchmarks and Software 64-bit Mode

To maintain our target audience within the professional market place, though we are now seeing many old readers coming back who like the style we produce; we opted for this outing a complete set of professional applications benchmarks.   This in turn means all walks of life have a very good idea what they are about to buy and just how fast it really is from this factual article.  The test system's shown within are all readily found within many arena's, therefore those just wishing the simple upgrade of either the Intel 3.33GHz Xeons or the  ATI FirePro V8750 they can see readily how much performance gain has been achieved. 

Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64-bit SP2
Sandra 2010
Bentley MicroStation Benchmark
POV Ray 3.7 beta 35
Cinebench 10 64-Bit
Cinebench 11.5 64-bit (New)
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
SPECviewperf® 10.0 64-bit.   Tests ran at 1280 X 1024 Resolution.

Each set of tests has been applied on the clean system hard drives shown above to ensure that no residue drivers were left installed with all updates/patches applied.   A test/render has been completed many times over different periods of the system uptime.   Maintaining the fair play rules of SPEC® we did not manipulate any of these mainboards functionality and left them all at their default settings in which it was supplied.   Tests have been conducted at 1280 X 1024 @ 60Hz in 32 bit colour.   Results that have been shown within this article are from the application/benchmarks first run in accordance with the SPECviewperf® and SPECapc fair play rules.  Not an average of 3 runs as some places seem to think is right. 

The results have been split up into two sections, Single Socket Xeon and then Dual Socket Xeon results

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - System Set-Up and Software used
Page 3 - One 3.33GHz Xeon Sandra 2010 CPU Tests
Page 4 - One 3.33GHz Xeon Bentley MicroStation Benchmark and  POV Ray 3.7 beta 35
Page 5 - One 3.33GHZ Xeon Cinebench 10 64-Bit and Cinebench 11.5 64-bit (New)
Page 6 - One 3.33GHz Xeon SPECviewperf® 10.0 – 64-bit and SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
Page 7 - Dual 3.33GHz Xeon Sandra 2010 CPU Tests
Page 8 - Dual 3.33GHz Xeon Bentley MicroStation Benchmark and  POV Ray 3.7 beta 35
Page 9 - Dual 3.33GHZ Xeon Cinebench 10 64-Bit and Cinebench 11.5 64-bit (New)
Page 10 - Dual 3.33GHz Xeon SPECviewperf® 10.0 64-bit and SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
Page 11 - Conclusions and Award