X8DAi - The Crunchinator

System Set-Up, Benchmarks and Applications Used

Having extensively covered in our earlier outing of Intel's S5520SC mainboard the target market remains within the same boundaries.  Though we have to note that Supermicro  supply out to many famous Tier 1 and Tier 2 OEM's to enhance their solutions.  You will be very surprised at just who some of the Tier 1 & 2 suppliers really are.  Therefore it goes to show just how much exceptional research and development truly goes into each part listed on Supermicro's website.   If Tier 1 and 2 users are supplying out equipment of this magnitude then we know from day 1 the product is to be exceptional.  So to reiterate. There are many points of focus that the suppliers can push this system mainboard into, though primarily it’s as we said in the onset a good workstation board that can be used in just about ever scenario you can possibly think of.   Which in turn means the corporate user, many small offices would benefit greatly and of course the high-end SoHo user that just needs a good all in one board that they can safely surf the net, play a video and of course most importantly safely produce those high-end drawings or scenes needed for the clients. Extremely functional.   Moving up a gear (and like today) used as a superb high-end workstation mainboard for the Studio’s looking for “crunch” functionality.  

Overall a very feature rich mainboard that can be utilised in many environments by the end users.

Many self build corporate and studio users maintain the philosophy to utilise one mainboard which provides them with an effective cost performance solution.  Time is money as too are extra peripherals needed to supplement a mainboard.  Once the board has reached end of life in the usage it was built, mainboards of this nature then find them stripped down and placed into a  2U chassis as a dedicated server or render node.  After all we must note the heatsink fans supplied out currently are designed for 2U operations.   Therefore the life span of these Mainboards and supporting CPU’s is extremely good, which brings us back once more to exceptional value for monies.  Deviating slightly the server capabilities of the board are very good with so many added value features that have been listed, therefore whilst we have covered this board heavily in a workstation scenario it must not be forgot that implementation of a server will be very good indeed.

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.

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Supermicro for the supply of the X8DAi 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, thank you for pulling out the stops here, currently DDR3 ECC memory is a very limited supply option from most memory makers.  On going to print we have been advised by Micron/Crucial that their is a good supply of this memory module.
 
 AMD for the supply of the FirePro V8700 professional graphics card.  
 
 NVIDIA for the supply of the Quadro® FX4800 professional graphics card

Akasa for the supply of the Chassis and 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 ATI FirePro V8700 or NVIDIA Quadro FX4800 they can see readily how much performance gain has been achieved.   A dedicated page for each professional graphics card has been given so that the results will be clearly seen on how each company has performed individually.

Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64-bit SP2
Sandra 2009 SP2
Everest 5 Ultimate
3DS Max 2009 Scenes
Cinebench 10 64 Bit
POV Ray 3.72 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 - 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