X8DAi - The Crunchinator

Conclusions

Were to start;  two words say it all - absolutely astounding.     We saw the gold standard being set by the X8SAX in the single socket i7 mainboards with its no frills superb upgrade path and once more we are left with the same scenario.  The Supermicro X8DAi is a mainboard that packs a punch with all that you need.  Flexibility, speed and superb 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.  The bios, we covered it briefly within the introduction, the bios set-up today in some mainboards is  becoming increasing complex, whilst a very commendable feature for complete optimisation it can be a complete pain for others.  Supermicro has stuck to the basic principles of making the bios functional and simple whilst maintaining peak optimal performance of the mainboard.  You do not see many bios updates for Supermicro mainboards and this is primarily down to the huge amount of R & D put into the development of the mainboard from the very concept.   Kudos for maintaining these standards.

The insertion today of the SSD's 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 these tiny beasts of burden.  The imminent advent of Windows 7 full support will make a huge difference over what has been shown here today.

The professional graphic cards shown today on the X8DAi functioned impeccably with all the results being remarkably close in many areas.  So both ATI and NVIDIA 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 an essential but forceful 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.

The new Supermicro's X8DAi workstation mainboard combined with Intel's Xeon Nehalem's are remarkably resilient - the more we threw at it - the more it wanted.  Spectacular 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 at present has to be hailed as one of the most momentous advancements achieved within a short timescale.  The introduction of Seaburg's 5400 chipset 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 Gold Standard". Move over Harpertown and Woodcrest: Supermicro's X8DAi Tylersburg is here to stay.   A decisive factor of this magnitude deserves only the best award possible - our Editors Choice.

www.3dprofessor.org award for Supermicro's X8DAi Workstation Mainboard

EDITORS CHOICE

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - Introduction Continued
Page 3 - Mainboard Photographs
Page 4 - System Build Pictures
Page 5 - System Set-Up, Benchmarks and Applications Used
Page 6 - Sandra 2009 SP2
Page 7 - Hard Drive Tests
Page 8 - ATI FirePro V8700 - Cinebench, POV-Ray 3.72 Beta and 3D Studio Max 2009 Scenes
Page 9 - ATI FirePro V8700 - SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™ and SPECviewperf® 10.0
Page 10 - NVIDIA Quadro FX4800 - Cinebench, POV-Ray 3.72 Beta and 3D Studio Max 2009 Scenes
Page 11 - NVIDIA Quadro FX4800 - SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™ and SPECviewperf® 10.0
Page 12 - Conclusions and Award