With the supplied parts on show today these main parts now form part of our “in house” test systems supplied courteously by Intel, Crucial Memory, Western Digital and Akasa; which could be found in most high-end studios and enthusiast workstation scenarios.   This is a very reliable and sound workstation platform which has plenty of scope for upgrading at later dates.

As this is an extreme system we decided to take the extreme to the limits, therefore not just one VelociRaptor in place but 2 and configured them into a Raid 0 array.   This configuration would most certainly push the complete limits of the mainboard and cooling.

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Intel EU for the supply of the Mainboard & CPU shown, Western Digital for the SATA Hard Discs, AMD for the supply of the FireGL V7700 professional graphics card, Akasa for a majority peripherals required for this review and finally but by no means least; Crucial Memory for their supply of the exclusive high speed Nehalem verified memory.

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 (32 Bit Mode)

The plethora of benchmarks available in this arena; one could spend all day in producing results if the time permitted, paralysis by analysis!  Many benchmarks have been heavily covered already therefore we felt it inappropriate to repeat this process with the few exceptions.   The clock ticked hard and fast against us therefore we did only have a very short time in which to complete this basic but factual review.

Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2c
HD Tach Version 3.0.4.0
HD Tune Ver 3.0
Sandra 2009
Everest Disc Benchmark
ATTO Hard Drive Benchmark
PCMark 2005 Advanced
MAXON CINEBENCH 10
Autodesk 3ds Max 9 SP2 Scenes
Bentley MicroStation V8 XM Graphics Benchmark v1.0.0.5
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
SPECviewperf 10 ®

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.