Less than three weeks back we popped out the door one of the most expansive X58 mainboards on the market today.   The article has had many thinking on new modes of system configurations and upgrade paths as the Supermicro X8SAX mainboard really has got the complete remit.

The article covered many areas the professional graphic's end-user would be looking for within the 32-bit mode and it was stated at the time an update on 64-bit mode would follow on swiftly.   More end users are switching over to 64-bit mode as models demand more memory bandwidth and as you will recall this board has plenty of it; supported with a maximum capacity of 24GB of memory.  Today no less as within this sort update sees just how much grunt lays within the X8SAX in 64-bit.   A single socket CPU mainboard that has the power of some dual Xeon systems.   

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

Test System.

Our “in house” test systems are growing but to maintain a sound and stable platform for tests of this magnitude the Supermicro X8SAX stays firmly in the box, supported by Intel's magnificent i7 CPU and Crucial's efficient DDR3 validated for the mainboard.    This will ensure for future outs a platform which will give total reliability for all that we throw at it within the single socket CPU scenarios.

NOTE 1.  Additional supplies of the 2GB Variant where not available at the time of test.   Therefore to test out a theory we ran with the appointed 3 X 1GB Modules within the secondary memory channel to see how the mainboards QPI would react.  This is not a standard protocol we would validate or recommend, as stipulated, purely a test of theory to pump as much memory onto the mainboard within the supported operating system from Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64-bit.

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 and ECC Memory, thank you for pulling out the stops here, currently DDR3 ECC memory is a very limited supply option from most memory makers.  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 64-bit Mode

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

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 and Set-Up
Page 2 - Results and Conclusions