Welcome to 3D Professor

System Build, Set-Up and Software Used

Component	Test System
Mainboard	Supermicro X8DA3 Mainboard
CPU	2 X 3.2GHz Intel® Xeon® W5580 Nehalem EP®, 8MB Shared Cache, 6.4GB/s QPI
HSF Coolers	2 X Noctua NH-U9DX 1366
Memory	6 X 2GB Crucial DDR3 (12GB Total) 1333MHz Unbuffered ECC DIMMS Memory Modules
Hard Drive	2 X 32GB Intel Enterprise SSD's (Configured to Raid 0 by onboard LSI Raid Controller)
PCI Ex Video Card	AMD (ATI) FirePro V8700
Chassis	Coolermaster Cosmos S
PSU	Akasa Freedom Power 1000W

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Supermicro for the supply of the X8DA3 Mainboard and 2 X 32GB Intel Enterprise SSD's

Intel EU for the supply of the 3.2GHz Intel® Xeon® W5580 Nehalem EP® CPU's shown within the Test System.

Crucial Memory for the DDR3 1333MHz Unbuffered ECC Memory.

AMD for the supply of the FirePro V8700 professional graphics cards.

Noctua for the supply of their excellent workstation U9DX HSF

Akasa for the supply of the PSU

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 the system has to provide and notwithstanding the professional graphic cards from each of the respective companies.

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 64-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. The test system shown within will be readily found within many arena's soon, therefore those just wishing the simple upgrade of either the single ATI FirePro V8700 or adding in another card and enabling ATI's now infamous CrossFire Pro Technology you can see readily how much performance gain has been achieved.

Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64-bit SP2
Sandra 2009 SP4
Everest 5.03 Ultimate
PCMark 2005 Advanced
ATTO Benchmark
Cinebench 10 64 Bit
Bentley MicroStation Graphics Benchmark
POV Ray 3.74 Beta
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
SPECviewperf® 10.0 – 64-bit.   Tests ran at 1280 X 1024 Resolution.

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 SPEC® 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 article are from the application/benchmarks first run in accordance with the SPECviewperf® and SPECapc 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 absolutely no need for a running commentary of the results gained from each system.

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

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