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. Intel certainly pulled out the stops with these excellent parts which in turn means we can now demonstrate with the newer peripherals coming online like today with the best possible results. This in turn will demonstrate to you the end user just what to fully expect when you purchase systems or parts of the like we have here in situ.
With the supplied parts on show today these main parts now form part of our “in house” test systems supplied courteously by Intel, Supermicro, Crucial Memory, OCZ, ATI, Western Digital and Akasa; which could be found in most high-end studios and enthusiast workstation scenarios. These are all very reliable and sound workstation platforms which have plenty of scope for upgrading and importantly – CHOICE, which we have voiced on many occasion.
Component | Test System 1 | Test System 2 | Test System 3 |
Mainboard | Intel® Desktop Mainboard DX58SO (SmackOver) | Intel® Workstation Board X58BP | |
CPU | 1 X Intel® Core™ i7-980X Processor Extreme Edition 12MB Shared Cache, 6.4GB/s QPI | 1 X 3.33GHz Intel® Xeon® W5590 Nehalem EP®, 8MB Shared Cache, 6.4GB/s QPI | 2 X 3.33GHz Intel® Xeon® X5680 Nehalem EP®, 12MB Shared Cache, 6.4GB/s QPI |
HSF Coolers | Intel’s Socket 1366 Stock Cooler | 1 X Akasa Nero Socket 1366 HSF | 2 X Noctua NH-U9DX 1366 |
Memory | 3 X 2GB Crucial DDR3 (6GB Total) 1333MHz | 3 X 2GB Crucial DDR3 (6GB Total) 1333MHz | 6 X 2GB Crucial DDR3 (12GB Total) 1333MHz |
Hard Drive | 1 X 256GB Western Digital SiliconEdge™ Blue™ SSD | 1 X 256GB Western Digital SiliconEdge™ Blue™ SSD | 1 X 256GB Western Digital SiliconEdge™ Blue™ SSD |
PCI Ex Video Card | AMD (ATI) FirePro V8750 | AMD (ATI) FirePro V8750 | AMD (ATI) FirePro V8750 |
PCI Ex Video Card | AMD (ATI) FirePro V8800 | AMD (ATI) FirePro V8800 | AMD (ATI) FirePro V8800 |
Hardware Suppliers for the Review
Intel EU for the supply of the 3.33GHz Intel® Xeon® W5590’s & X5690 Nehalem EP® CPU’s, the X58BP and DX58SO
mainboards shown within the Test Systems 1 & 2.
Supermicro for the supply of the X8DA3 shown within the Test System 3
Crucial Memory for the DDR3 1333MHz Unbuffered ECC Memory, thank you for pulling out the stops here.
ATI for the supply of the FirePro V8750 and FirePro V8800 professional graphics cards.
Akasa and Noctua for the supply of the Heatsink Fans critical to the high end Xeon systems
Western Digital for the supply of the new 256GB SiliconEdge Blue SSD.
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 ATI.
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’s shown within are all readily found within many arena’s, therefore those just wishing the simple upgrade of either the new Intel 3.33GHz Westmere Xeons or the brand new ATI FirePro V8800 they can see readily how much performance gain has been achieved. For a more factual in depth look at the actual performance uptake in the professional graphics cards we placed the current king of the Ultra High End Professional Workstation Card the ATI FirePro V8750 against the new young contender the ATI FirePro V8800. Will the claims be as good as we have heard. Time will tell from within.
Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64-bit SP2
Sandra 2010
POV Ray 3.7 beta 35
Cinebench 10 64-Bit
Cinebench 11.5 64-bit (New)
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 these mainboards functionality and left them all at their 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.
Professional graphic card results have been split up into three sections: Gulftown, Single Socket Xeon and finally
Dual Socket Xeon results
Page 1 – Introduction The ATI FirePro™ V8800 3D Workstation Graphics Accelerator
Page 2 – The new X5680 3.33GHz Intel® Xeon® Processor
Page 3 – The New Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256GB SSD
Page 4 – System’s Set-Up and Software Used
Page 5 – Sandra 2010 and POVRAY on Westmere
Page 6 – WD 256GB SiliconEdge Blue SSD
Page 7 – Westmere – HyperThreading Switched Off
Page 8 – ATI FirePro™ V8800 and Gulftown
Page 9 – ATI FirePro™ V8800 and a Single 3.33GHz Intel® Xeon® W5590 Nehalem EP® System
Page 10 – ATI FirePro™ V8800 and a Dual 3.33GHz Intel® Xeon® X5680 Nehalem EP® (aka Westmere) System
Page 11 – SPECviewperf® 10.0 64-bit The ATI FirePro™ V8750 v The ATI FirePro™ V8800
Page 12 – Conclusions and Awards