Maintaining the continuity of our build of “in house” test systems encompassing the Supermicro X9SCA it stays firmly in the box. This mainboard is supported by Intel’s excellent Intel’s® C204 PCH Chipset, Intel’s® 1280 E-Series CPU finalising with Crucial’s efficient ECC DDR3 validated for the mainboard. This will ensure for future outings a platform which will give total reliability for all that we throw at it within the single socket CPU scenarios with complete sound and stable platform for tests of this magnitude. This ensures that all current professional graphic cards tested on this platform are shown at their best.
Component | Test System |
Mainboard | |
CPU | 1 X 3.5GHz Intel® Xeon® 1280 E Series, 8MB Shared Cache, 5GB/s QPI |
CPU Cooling | |
Memory | 4 X 4GB (16GB Total) Crucial DDR3 1333MHz Unbuffered ECC Memory Modules |
Hard Drive | 1 X 250GB Crucial m4 Solid State Drive (6GB/s) |
Video Card | 1 X Nvidia® Quadro 5000 |
Intake Cooling | Akasa 120mm Amber Fans |
Exhaust Cooling | Akasa 120mm Amber Fans |
Chassis | |
PSU | Akasa PowerMax 850W |
Hardware Suppliers for the Review
Crucial Memory for the m4 Series Solid State Drive (6GB/s) and the DDR3 1333MHz Unbuffered ECC Memory.
Intel EU for the supply of the new 3.5GHz Intel® Xeon® 1280 E Series CPU
Nvidia for the supply of the Quadro® 5000
Supermicro for the supply of the X9SCA Mainboard
Akasa for the supply of the Nero 2 Heatsink Fan and Raptor Chassis for the new Supermicro X9SCA mainboard
With the support and help of all the companies involved. It gives you the reader a 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 both AMD and NVIDIA.
Systems Integrators, OEM’s and VAR’s should contact all companies directly for pricing and availability of all components, Boston being a good starting point. Members of the public should contact their respective suppliers requesting the parts directly. One main e-tailer that can supply the EU reader readily all the parts listed you should pop over to SCAN and see what todays best bottom dollar deal is on the main parts listed.
Benchmarks and Software Used 64-bit Mode
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
SiSoftware Sandra 2011 (Latest Build)
AS SSD Solid State Drive Test
CrystalMark 3 64-bit Benchmark
PCMark 7 Professional
POV-ray 64-bit 3.7 RC3
Bentley MicroStation Benchmark
Cinebench 11.5 64-bit
Redway Turbine Benchmark
SPECapc SM for 3ds Max 2011™
SPECapcSM for Maya 2009
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
SPECviewperf® 11.0 64-bit
An array of synthetic and application tests which will stretch the complete system I/O in every way conceivable. Each has its own merits and each shows on how the CPU, Chipset, Memory, SSD and the professional graphics card fully perform to the maximum. Each set of tests has been applied on the clean system hard drive 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. Whilst maintaining the fair play rules of SPEC® HyperThreading and Turbo Boost have been enabled, with the memory being left in its default status of Auto. Tests have been conducted in accordance with the resolutions stipulated within the test run rules of 1920 x 1080 @ 59Hz / 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 and in order to maintain continuity all other test results have been obtained in the same process.
Page 1 – Introduction
Page 2 – m4 in the Flesh
Page 3 – System Set -Up and Software Used
Page 4 – SiSoftware Sandra 2011 Drive Tests
Page 5 – Miscellaneous Solid State Drive Benchmark Tests
Page 6 – System I/O Tests – PCMark 7 and POVRAY
Page 7 – Miscellaneous Professional Graphic Card Benchmark Tests
Page 8 – SPECviewperf® and SPECapc™ Benchmark Tests
Page 9 – Conclusions and Award