Enter Machine Gun Joe
For these past 6 months we have been using the Supermicro X8SAX mainboard as one of our primary workstation mainboards. Reasoning why, complete and utter stability. Bios updates you can count upon one hand from release. A bios that is robust and stable, a mainboard that anything can be thrown at it and it just keeps going. You cannot ask anymore than this what Supermicro has to offer, hence our reasoning for it being in situ. We have had many requests these last few months for some facts and figures on the actual boards performance in other areas so within page 5 we ran the latest version SiSoftware Sandra 2010 and produced a few substantial tests which back up soundly what we have been saying.
The mainboard supports a host of functionality that is too long to list though to summarise
Supermicro motherboards based on the Intel X58 Express chipset support Intel’s Core™ i7 and Xeon® 5600/5500/3600/3500 series processors in the LGA 1366 socket. With features that include support for 36 PCI-E 2.0 lanes, up to 24 GB DDR3 memory, and optional integrated IPMI 2.0 support, these boards deliver the highest performance for 1U, 2U+ and pedestal form factors.
Key Features
- Intel® Core™ i7 / i7 Extreme Edition, and Intel® Xeon® 5600/5500/3600/3500 series processors (QPI up to 6.4 GT/s)
2. Intel® X58 Express Chipset
3. Up to 24GB DDR3 1333/1066/800 ECC / non-ECC Un-Buffered DIMM
4. Intel® Dual 82574L Gigabit Ethernet Controller
5. 6x SATA (3.0Gbps) Ports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10
6. 2 (x16) PCI-Express 2.0,
1 (x4) PCI-Express (using X8 slot),
2x 64-bit 133/100MHz PCI-X,
1x 32-bit PCI Slots
7. Realtek ALC883 7.1 HD Audio
8. 12x USB 2.0 Ports
9. 2x IEEE 1394a Headers
So the rapid firing Supermicro X8SAX wholeheartly deserves its name indeed.
Supermicro X8SAX supporting the ATI FirePro V9800
Supermicro X8SAX supporting the Nvidia Quadro 60000
Page 1 – ATI FirePro V9800 Introduction
Page 2 – ATI FirePro V9800 Professional Graphic Card Pictures
Page 3 – Introducing “Machine Gun Joe”
Page 4 – System Set-Up and Software Used
Page 5 – SiSoftware Sandra 2010 Tests on System
Page 6 – SiSoftware Sandra 2010 Tests on the ATI FirePro V9800
Page 7 – Bentley MicroStation and POVRAY 3.7 beta 38 (64-bit)Benchmark
Page 8 – Redway Turbine Benchmark and Cinebench 11.5
Page 9 – SPECapc SM for 3ds Max 9 TM and SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
Page 10 – SPECapcSM for Maya 2009
Page 11 – SPECviewperf® 11.0 64-bit
Page 12 – Conclusions and Award