Supermicro X8SAX Workstation Mainboard

Cry Havoc and Let Slip The Super O Dog of War

A few months back to took to task a mainboard that had been causing huge WHOW factors around the professional communities the Supermicro X7DWA-N mainboard.  Along came Intel and brought forth its new X58 chipset and i7 CPU's which have caused an almighty storm within all walks of life.   The professional community biting hard at the bit waiting patiently for the Dual variant to come forth - well that's not too far around the corner now least we thinks.   We knew up on the horizon that Supermicro had something very interesting coming forth with its X8SAX variant of the X58.   Therefore for those wishing to take that upgrade path now embracing the complete advantage of Intel's new offering of the i7 and X58 but, rely heavily upon ECC memory for those mission critical systems, then look no further.   Here is the gold standard.

On paper this looks to be one mighty beast, bulging in supporting 24GB of Non ECC or ECC memory.   Its understandable why the professional would want such a board.  Though conversely speaking hidden within the Bios are a huge amount of overclocking variables that will keep those who love to do this very happy for a while to come.   Our time scales here have been tight therefore we did not get the opportunity to look at this in more detail, though it's there.  If its anything like we have discovered within at stock levels then this solid foundation of a mainboard will keep overclockers very happy.

From the X58 Tylersburg Supermicro have developed some 8 different mainboards to suit all needs.  It shows how that they have advanced their train of thought on how influential this chipset is going to be within the professional arena.

Ø  Supermicro X8SAX - Outstanding price/performance with PCI-E 2.0 graphics and DDR3 memory

Ø  Supermicro C7X58 - Highest performing desktop board with NVIDIA® SLI™ Technology support

Ø  Supermicro X8ST3-F

Ø  Supermicro X8STE

Ø  Supermicro X8STi-3-F

Ø  Supermicro X8STi-F

Ø  Supermicro X8STi-LN4

Ø  Supermicro  X8STi

Yes you have read correctly a dedicated X58 mainboard for NVIDIA® SLI™ Technology.   .  If you click on the highlighted URL's above for each of the listed new mainboards you will get a surprise to how enriched they are with features, an example being  SAS via LSI 1068E SAS Controller on the X8STi-3-F.

Todays outing is be squarely focused on the Supermicro X8SAX what believe to be one of the best single CPU workstation mainboards to come out from any one manufacturer in a long time.  The built in Slots and Devices means that there can be no waste what so-ever of all those valuable raid cards, hard drives and anything else that have long supported the current systems

But before we move any further forward lets have a swift look at what this mainboard actually has to offer the demanding end user.

The obvious target market for this entry level High End workstation are geophysicists, designers, scientists, engineers, Medical Imagery and other technical professionals demanding nothing but the best out from their workstations.   Notwithstanding with the variants listed below, this mainboard is going to be found within many a server rack or render studio looking for a fast buck solid solution as its very aggressively priced.

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - Mainboard and System Build Pictures
Page 3 - System Set-Up and Benchmarks/Software Used
Page 4 - Sandra 2009
Page 5 - Hard Drive Tests
Page 6 - ATI's FirePro V8700 NON ECC RESULTS - Autodesk
Page 7 - MAXON CINEBENCH 10 and Bentley MicroStation V8 XM Graphics Benchmark v1.0.0.5
Page 8 - SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™ and SPECviewperf 10 ®
Page 9 - Conclusions