Our array of “in house” test systems has now been fully completed as over the forth coming months, many exciting things will be happening here that will have you aghast with awe. Supermicro and Intel certainly pulled out the stops with these excellent parts which in turn means we can demonstrate with the newer peripherals coming online the best possible results. This in turn will exhibit to you the end user just what to fully expect when you purchase systems of the like we have here in situ.
With the supplied parts on show today have been courteously supplied by Intel, Supermicro, Crucial Memory, NVIDIA and Akasa; which could be found in most high-end studios and enthusiast workstation scenarios. These are very reliable and sound workstation platforms which have an abundance of scope for upgrading, which we have voiced on many occasion.
For this outing we sat back and looked carefully at the target market place and as the single socket Intel Xeon is now becoming the vogue choice of platform for many studio’s we decided to run with Supermicro’s X8SAX Rev 2 mainboard that support Intel’s X5677 (3.46GHz) Xeon CPU for these types of workstation mainboards.
Component | Test System |
Mainboard | |
CPU | 1 X 3.46GHz Intel® Xeon® X5677 Nehalem EP®, 12MB Shared Cache, 6.4GB/s QPI |
HSF Coolers | Intel’s Socket 1366 Stock Cooler |
Memory | 3 X 2GB Crucial DDR3 (6GB Total) 1333MHz |
Hard Drive | 256GB Crucial C300 RealSSD |
PCI Ex Video Card | NVIDIA® Quadro® 4000 |
Hardware Suppliers for the Review
Intel EU for the supply of the 3.46GHz Intel® Xeon® X5677 Westmere® CPU
Supermicro for the supply of the X8SAX Rev 2 Mainboard shown within the Test System
Crucial Memory for the C300 RealSSD and the DDR3 1333MHz Unbuffered ECC Memory, thank you for pulling out the stops here.
NVIDIA® for the supply of the Quadro® 4000 professional graphic card.
Akasa for the Supply of the Omega Chassis and Nero HSF
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 NVIDIA.
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 64-bit Mode
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Bentley Graphics MicroStation Benchmark
Cinebench 11.5
Redway Turbine Benchmark
SPECapc for 3ds Max™ 9
SPECapc for Maya® 2009
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
SPECviewperf® 11.0 64-bit.
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. 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 detailed above @ 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.
Page 1 – Introduction
Page 2 – Quadro® 4000 Comparison
Page 3 – Card Pictures
Page 4 – System Set-Up and Software Used
Page 5 – Bentley Graphics MicroStation Benchmark, Cinebench 11.5 and Redway Turbine Benchmark
Page 6 – SPECapc for 3ds Max™ 9
Page 7 – SPECapc for Maya® 2009
Page 8 – SPECviewperf® 11.0 64-bit and SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
Page 9 – Conclusions and Award