Where to start;  three words say it all - extremely beyond belief.     We saw the gold standard being set by the X8DAi in the EP solution mainboards with its no frills superb upgrade path and once more we are left with the same scenario.  The Supermicro X8DA3 is a mainboard that packs a punch with all that you need.  Flexibility of choice, the need for speed and exceptional indisputable performance.

Lets start with a few basic's sometimes heavily overlooked.   Many will have noted the slight pull out lever on the PCI Express rail, simple but effective to the S.I. who places multiple cards in and out of a system to check out complete compatibility with the graphic cards.  As stated, its simple but on some mainboards with cards of this size (now becoming the norm) an important feature which helps in the speed up process whilst switching things around.

Hidden away in the Bios are the basic set-ups required to get you up and running.  No fancy timings or values that might rattle many a monocell rushing to the manual; just a straight forward working bios that allows one to be up and running within minutes.  This has been an area that Supermicro has excelled in for many years.   Today this is radically important as speed and time is of the essence to all, therefore the less we have to worry about a confusing bios the better.   Some may argue no, others applaud.   A debate for another day, though for now this is excellent as it will mean even the most basic end user can be up and completely functional within a very short time frame.  It has to be reiterated time is money and the least hindrances in downtime means more uptime and functionality whether in the server room manipulating those all important transactions, or completing a monstrous render/redraw output.

Kudos for maintaining these standards.

The insertion today of the SSD's in Raid 0 over the standard boot drives most certainly gave the overall system that additional edge whilst opening and closing programmes, instant viewing upon the desktop a treat to behold.  The results shown within prove just how quickly they react.

Benchmarks and applications results shown within are extremely good, who would ever think that such tiny items would produce such remarkable scores.  Rendering, Ray Tracing and large model reads will benefit without doubt from the SSD's oh yea tiny beasts of burden.  The recent launch of Windows 7 will see full support of the equipment shown and will make a huge difference over what has been shown here today.

The professional graphic cards shown today on the X8DA3 functioned impeccably with all the results being remarkably close in many areas.  So ATI will be walking away very happy indeed.  It is not often that we see a tie in this area and yet again shows the remarkable co-operation both companies have with Supermicro.  Therefore in turn this is a sound platform base that any S.I. or OEM can build a fundamental sound professional graphics workstation system knowing it will work perfectly.  

What of availability and pricing, there are on going to print some prices floating around now from some e-tailers. However, it is best that you contact your suppliers directly as they will have in place pricing structures and due delivery dates of all components. This will be your best port of call; do expect a rush so get your cheque books primed and that vital order in very quickly indeed.

Supermicro in it's normal fashionable offerings have in this instance completely surpassed themselves embracing this technology.   In the introduction we reiterated on the initial offerings available now we see fully 44 different mainboards to be found within 41 different solutions.  A massive offering to all walks of life many different solutions to meet all pockets. 

Supermicro's X8DA3 workstation mainboard combined with Intel's Xeon Nehalem's are remarkably resilient - the more we threw at it - the more it demanded.  Magnificent to say the least.   With all above covered, developers and programmers now will be having many thoughts on the actual way ahead.   We briefly mentioned earlier Ray Tracing, this does take a huge amount of processing power to complete some of the most simplest scenes - bring it on we say as this mainboard will chew through it all and life it's just gotten a whole lot easier.   The technology shown today has to be hailed as one of the most momentous advancements achieved within a short timescale.  The introduction of Supermicro's X8DAi was greeted as the new unsung hero within the workstation environment.   Now we seem a new stallion gallop forth from Supermicro's pedigree stable with impeccable breeding.    The key words are "blisteringly fast and most importantly the Platinum Standard": Supermicro's X8DA3 is here to stay.   A decisive factor of this magnitude deserves only the best award possible - our Editors Choice.

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - Introduction Continued
Page 3 - System Build, Set-Up and Software Used
Page 4 - Sandra 2009 SP4 Part 1
Page 5 - Sandra 2009 SP4 - Part 2
Page 6 - Hard Disc Tests
Page 7 - PCMark 2005 Advanced
Page 8 - Bentley MicroStation Graphics Benchmark and POV Ray 3.74 Beta
Page 9 - SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™ and MAXON Cinebench 10
Page 10 - SPECviewperf® 10.0 – 64-bit
Page 11 - Conclusions and Award