Intel® Workstation Board WX58BP (Banroof Point) and the Intel® Xeon® Processor 3570

Introduction

The ever changing face of the workstation environment means for todays S.I.'s, VAR's and OEM's a massive amount of work testing and evaluating huge workloads of differing new equipment.  Some mainboards and peripherals are extremely simple to set to work, others can be very daunting with their complex bios and onboard adaption's.  Though there are a few Tier 1 and 2 builders that make life for the S.I.'s, VAR's et al, oh so very simple.   In December 08 we saw the advent of Supermicro's excellent X8SAX mainboard leap into the foray showing how it should be done and this has been to date an extremely successful selling mainboard.   Like all good vintages, one more sneaks into the limelight with Intel's new offering the WX58BP (Banroof Point) supporting the Intel® Xeon® Processor 3500 series and, for the impatient a maximum of 16GB of 1333MHz ECC memory.   Therefore we have on paper another mainboard that just could fulfill the requirements of the bold who construct these masterpieces so many take for granted.

Therefore following the official line lets have a brief look at the mainboards features.

An entry level workstation board with Intel® Xeon® processor W3500 series, ideal for engineering, scientific, economic and digital content creation applications. The Intel® Workstation Board WX58BP is an affordable entry level workstation which supports the latest Intel® Xeon® processor W3500 series and Error Checking & Correction (ECC) memory. The dual PCI Express* 2.0 x16 slots fully support ATI CrossFire Technology (See Note 1).

1. PCI Slots.   2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot
                   1 PCI Express 2.0 x4 slot
                   2 PCI Express 1.0 x1 slot
                   1 PCI 32/33 slot

2. Supports Intel® Xeon processor W3500 series

3. Chipset - Intel® X58 Express with Intel® I/O Controller Hub 10R

4. Three memory channel DDR3 1066/1333 MHz ECC DIMMs (16GB).   Intel Quick Path Technology up to 6.4GB/s

5. Storage.   6 SATA ports (3 Gbps) via ICH10R with Intel® Matrix Storage Technology (RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 and new Intel® Rapid Recover Technology)

6. Integrated LAN.  Embedded Intel® 82567LM Gigabit Ethernet Controller

7. Integrated audio - Dolby* home theater with high definition audio

Note 1.  We have completely fully tested and found that the mainboard supports fully ATI CrossFire Pro Technology for the ATI FirePro Professional graphics cards.

Therefore overall a very powerful mainboard that can find the place in many office workstation environments which demand nothing but the best and intensive computational output.  Add on the correct supporting peripherals and you will have a silent but powerful beast of burden

With the mainboard completed we move onwards to the UP Intel® Xeon® processor W3500 series

The new 45nm built for business growth.   Based on enhanced Intel® Core™ microarchitecture, 64-bit quad-core computing with up to 12 MB on-die cache and 1333 MHz front side bus provides the performance necessary for small, medium business owners looking for ways to support rapid business growth on small technology budgets.  We have to also note that this new architecture is also suitable for building small, cost-effective HPC clusters that create high-performance, personal super computing solutions and work-group clusters.

Intel® Xeon® processors come in 5 variants as we have listed below

In combination with the above mainboard a single solution budget Xeon workstation is within the grasp of many end-users from all walks of life.  With choice now being offered in professional graphics, many struggling studios can seriously upgrade and correctly utilise the workstation at a later date as a cost effective render box as we covered earlier in the introduction.

With the elementary brief completed lets have a look at the system in the flesh with a single ATI FirePro V7750 and fully set-up lastly in CrossFire Pro Technology mode.

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - System Build Pictures
Page 3 - System Set-Up and Software Used
Page 4 - SiSoftware Sandra 2009 SP3 64-bit tests
Page 5 - Hard Disc Tests
Page 6 - Sandra 2009 Video Card Tests
Page 7 - Everest 5.02 Ultimate, POV-RAY and Cinebench 10
Page 8 - SPECviewperf® 10.0 64-bit and SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
Page 9 - Conclusions and Award