Therefore what of the setup and configuration.  Intel EU kindly shipped a complete unit here for our tests and evaluation of the new S5520SC Tylersburg mainboard.   This did save a huge amount of time having to source from other companies the parts required for today and forth coming events.  Our esteemed thanks indeed.  Looking into this ready to go solution means that the cost concise point can be readily met immediately and put into functionality straight away as either a pedestal mount or in 4U rack.   This in turn means many S.I.'s and OEMS can meet the needs of client requests very quickly as each of these chassis comes with a predetermined PSU to meet the requirements of the build.

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Intel EU for the supply of the 3.2GHz Intel® Xeon® W5580 Nehalem EP® CPU's shown within the Test System, the S5520SC Shady Cove Mainboard and this excellent chassis.  

Crucial Memory  for the DDR3 1333MHz Unbuffered ECC Memory, thank you for pulling out the stops here, currently DDR3 ECC memory is a very limited supply option from most memory makers.  On going to print we have been advised by Micron/Crucial that their is a good supply of this memory module.

Western Digital for the VelociRaptor Hard Disc. 

AMD for the supply of the FirePro V8700 professional graphics card.  

NVIDIA for the supply of the Quadro® FX4800 professional graphics card

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 shown within will be readily found within many arena's soon, therefore those just wishing the simple upgrade of either the ATI FirePro V8700 or NVIDIA Quadro FX4800 they can see readily how much performance gain has been achieved.   A dedicated page for each professional graphics card has been given so that the results will be clearly seen on how each company has performed individually.

Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64-bit SP2
Sandra 2009 SP2
Everest 5 Ultimate
3DS Max 2009 Scenes
Cinebench 10 64 Bit
POV Ray 3.71 Beta
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 this mainboards functionality and left it at its 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 speak very clearly for themselves as a picture paints a thousand words; so there is absolutely no need for a running commentary of the results gained from each system. 

Page 0 - Introduction
Page 1 - Mainboard and Pictures
Page 2 - Mainboard (continued) and Build Pictures
Page 3 - System Set-Up and Benchmarks Used
Page 4 - Sandra 2009 SP2
Page 5 - Everest 5 Ultimate
Page 6 - ATI FirePro V8700 - Cinebench and POV Ray 3.71 Beta
Page 7 - ATI FirePro V8700 - 3DS Max 2009 Scenes
Page 8 - ATI FirePro V8700 - SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™ & SPECviewperf® 10.0
Page 9 - NVIDIA Quadro® FX4800 - Cinebench and POV Ray 3.71 Beta
Page 10 - NVIDIA Quadro® FX4800 - 3DS Max 2009 Scenes
Page 11 - NVIDIA Quadro® FX4800 - SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™ & SPECviewperf® 10.0
Page 12 - Conclusions and Awards
Bonus01 - *Exclusive* Introducing the ATI FirePro V7750
Bonus02 - *Exclusive* Introducing the NVIDIA Quadro FX3800