Test System.

Our “in house” test systems for this outing are mostly courteous of Intel EU and Supermicro.  We have already given Intel's stock X58 (SmackOver) mainboard very through outings with both ATI's FirePro V8700 and most recently the NVIDIA Quadro® FX4800.    Within both sets of tests the X58 Smackover mainboard performed impeccably returning superb results and most importantly resounding stability.   Can it be now replaced with Supermicro's offering?  Time will tell throughout this article.

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Intel EU for the supply of the 3.2GHz Intel® Core™i7 CPU shown within the Test System.   Supermicro for the X8SAX mainboard. Crucial Memory  for the DDR3 Non-ECC Memory, thank you for pulling out the stops here.  Western Digital for the VelociRaptor Hard Discs.  AMD for the supply of the FirePro V8700 professional graphics card.  Finally Akasa for a majority peripherals required for this review.

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 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.  In order to remain balanced each of the professional graphic's card has been placed within a set of pages for its own showing as each have their own merits.

Test System 1 - 32-bit Mode

Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3
MAXON CINEBENCH 10
Autodesk 3ds Max 2009 Scenes
Bentley MicroStation V8 XM Graphics Benchmark v1.0.0.5
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
SPECviewperf 10 ®

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. 

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