Test Systems.

Our “in house” test systems for this outing are mostly courteous of Intel EU and Supermicro.    The Intel® Desktop Mainboard DX58SO (Smackover) with Intel® 3.2GHz Intel® Core™i7  965 Extreme Processor.  These are exceptional choice of parts.  These parts are now whistling their way around OEM's and System Integrators alike and they are finding out just how powerful even the lowly the Core™i7 920 is. This is a superb resilient platform that just keeps pushing out the data without error, and those thinking about it, then look no further - for now.

Skulltrail, it’s been around for sometime now and still continues to amaze the many of its raw processing power.   Many have seen this configuration working flawlessly within the workstation environment; though as our want we took it one stage further to show the SoHo users that this mainboard configuration can be used successfully with the NVIDIA Quadro® FX4800 in the Workstation environment.   Within these scenario’s we aimed to show how powerful the set-up really is that we have shown today.  Although these are expensive parts of equipment the facilities that the board has to offer are huge and for the SoHo user taking their time in upgrading we decided upon showing this route today with a further look later on utilising both CPU’s.    Although Skulltrail is only PCI Ex 1.1 complaint, the results we have collated will astonish you all.

The last system comes by means of Supermicro - we named it "The Cruncher Machine" due to its superb flexibility within the professional workstation arena.  There are so many configurations that it might be used within. Though for today and to "check sum" some previously issued NVIDIA Quadro® figures we have configured it to this solution so clarify these guideline figures.

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Intel EU for the supply of the Mainboards in Test Systems 1 and 2 and; all the CPU's shown within all the Test Systems.   Supermicro for the X7DWA-N mainboard and Kingston for the DDR2 FBDIMMS.  Western Digital for the VelociRaptor Hard Discs.  NVIDIA for the supply of the Quadro® FX4800 professional graphics card.   Akasa for a majority peripherals required for this review and finally but by no means least; Crucial Memory for their supply of the exclusive high speed Nehalem verified memory and FBDIMMS within Test System 2.

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 each system has to provide. 

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 Used 32-bit and 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 systems shown within are varied but readily found within many arena's now, therefore those wishing just the simple upgrade of the NVIDIA Quadro FX4800 they can see readily how much performance gain has been achieved.

Test System 1 - 32-bit Mode

Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3
MAXON CINEBENCH 10
Bentley MicroStation V8 XM Graphics Benchmark v1.0.0.5
Autodesk 3ds Max 9 SP2 Scenes
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
SPECviewperf 10 ®

Test Systems 2 and 3 - 64-bit Mode

Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64-bit and SP2
MAXON CINEBENCH 10 64-bit Test
SPECviewperf 10 ® 64-bit Test

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 SPECviewperf® and SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™ 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 review are from the application/benchmarks first run in accordance with the SPECviewperf® 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 no need for a running commentary of the results gained from each system.  “Run Logs” the SPECviewperf®  tests are available to those of you who wish to see them.    Please e-mail the administrator here who will forward them onto you on a first come first served basis.    This may take some time to get back to you as on first out launches of this nature we are undated with requests.

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - Introduction Continued
Page 3 - Pictures
Page 4 - Pictures Continued
Page 5 - Test Systems and Software Used (32-bit & 64-bit modes)
Page 6 - MAXON CINEBENCH 10 and Bentley MicroStation V8 XM Graphics Benchmark
Page 7 - Autodesk 3ds Max 9 SP2 Scenes
Page 8 - SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™ and SPECviewperf 10 ® (32-bit)
Page 9 - MAXON CINEBENCH 10 and SPECviewperf 10 ® (32-bit)
Page 10 - Conclusions
Page 11 - Whee