Remember EVGA's
seven-GPU motherboard monstrosity, the W555? That experimental beast of a board just got declassified -- and given immediate launch orders. Under the new "Classified SR-2" callsign, the board's layout has hardly changed since CES (though the heatsinks certainly got a makeover) but the big news here is that each of its two CPU sockets will support those fancy new six-core Xeon processors. As you're well aware, two times six is twelve -- and since each of the Xeon 5600's cores can handle 2 threads, you're looking at the basis for a 24-threaded powerhouse for mondo multitasking performance. Factor in enough slots for 4-way
SLI,
CrossFireX and 48GB of RAM, and it's not hard to figure out why the red-and-black HPTX (15- x 13.6-inches!) creation commands a $600 price point. The only questions are how much a full system will deplete your wallet, and how many fuses your house will blow after pressing the power button.
Correction: Just a note that Intel's Core i7-980X
isn't supported here, but the new Xeon 5600 CPUs are.
posted March 17th 2010 4:33PM
I'll be getting one of these to see how it melts
@Alexpeegs
ITS OVER 9000!!!11!1!ONE!!
@tobsmonster2
I... Just came.
@Alexpeegs
Can you say dream machine?
@abedinthehouse its not a dream, its a reality! MUHAHAHAHAHA
@Alexpeegs Peter Tan (Shamino) has all of my respect on this engineering feat of his. I had the opportunity to speak with him during CES 2010 along with the opportunity of having two hours of hands-on time with the almost-final prototype board at the time. I sincerely congratulate him and the rest of the EVGA product team for putting together an outstanding, record-breaking world first in the emerging market of enthusiast consumer supercomputing.
May the Classified Super Record 2 (SR-2) live long and prosper!
@Alexpeegs
If you thought the old Skulltrail rigs were expensive to build, check out the price of one of the CPUs that this was built for: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117176.
This is designed for the 5600-series, not the 7400.
@Bandit5317
Wrong processor. It's not compatible with the 7400 processors... those are high end servers with 4 to 32 processors. This board is intended for the consumer grade 5600 series, but note, not all 5600 series processors have 6 cores.
http://www.intel.com/Assets/en_US/PDF/prodbrief/323501.pdf
@Please forgive me
Sorry, forgot to say, the board looks absolutely stunning, although I have no need for more than 2 video cards. I suppose they can hold SAS or some other PCI-e cards.
@tobsmonster2
JIZZ IN MY PANTS!!!!!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwDMLToRBgY
@Please forgive me what, you dont plan on running Crysis 2 on enthusaist settings at 60FPS and a 2540p resolution?
Whats wrong with you?
O_O!
Adding this to my list. I'll get it for $500 when it goes on sale. :) Anyone else?
@n0ne Oh, Engadget, you forgot to mention it has 2 x 3.0 USB. :D
@n0ne Nah, I'd rather grab a TYAN S4989WG2NR... Once the 12 core AMD Opteron ships in the next few months you'll be able to run 48 physical cores with 256 GB ram (only 2 x16 pcie slots, but 2 PCI-X slots as well, so you could do a hardware RAID 0 array of SSDs)... And the quad Opteron board is the same price as this one...
@ircmaxell Hmmm... So many options for us crazy PC nerds...
@ircmaxell But isn't that a server motherboard and not intended for gaming? This one supports SLI so it'd probably still be better at playing Crysis. Unless you'd intend to use it for raw number crunching.
@Oliver Taylor Everyone always talks about Crysis. Have you ever played crysis? It Sucks! I just want to play some good games, wile being able to do other "Stuff" in the background.
Enough about Crysis!
/rant
@n0ne
SOLITAIRE WILL NEVER BE PLAYED THE SAME!!!
/sarcasm/
@PlatinumSkeet
You'll just lose that much FASTER!
=P
@NoOneSpecific People just use Crysis as a playable graphics benchmark, never lasts more than 10 minutes
@n0ne
NOPE I'll wait for a big price drop next year then get it or competitor
@n0ne
I'll be waiting till next year when you throw this one out as you upgrade then to the latest and greatest.
@n0ne
yeah games that suck always have a 91 at metacritic.
@n0ne
Crysis isn't a "game".
It's an interactive benchmarking tool.
@n0ne I thought it was pretty fun...
... but yeah... like others have said, it's a good benchmark mostly because it doesn't use efficient coding for pushing pixels and effects.
If they remade it and tried hard to optimize it it'd run a lot better on much lower-end machines.
@Zer0Kage
Which is exactly what they are doing.
I thought Crysis was a fantastic game. You had a huge range of options in pretty much every objective you had to complete. It was beautiful game, but I thought the gameplay was fantastic as well.
@ircmaxell The only Tyan board I owned (dual athlon xp) burst into flames. Literally. There were flames shooting out of the ATX power connector when it died. No more Tyan for me.
Kinda of like the PC equivilant of a Dodge Viper. Raw, awesome, un-forgiving power - but probably a little sketchy if you don't know what you're doing.
@MemphisNET Also, having a Dodge Viper seems cool to you, and your male friends who know about cars, but when you use it as your opening line in a bar, it tends not to work so well.
Hey baby, I've got a PC with 4 graphics cards in SLI, two 980X 6 Core i7s, 48Gb of DDR3 RAM and USB 3.0. I would say "Your place or mine", but I sold my place to buy this PC.
@Oli D
LMHO
@vanwazltoff laughing your .....hat... off?
@Cam
It's a British Gentlemanly internet phrase,
Lift My Hat Off
@Oli D and then she replies "You're lying, the Classified SR-2 only supports the Xeon 5600, not the i7-980X. Too bad as I have a great empty bed, bye."
@Schmich I JUST SPILLED MY COFFEE LOOOOOOOOL
@Oli D I'd fucking punch you in your face for being a nerd! Then I'd rush into your apartment to steal that mo-fo beast! :D
MY PRRRRRRECIOUS!
WANT, not need but WANT!
(you know the same feeling you get when you walk into a Brookstone at the mall)
@bazookafx3
i know that feeling. but I lie to myself so well that i convince myself that I NEED it
@bazookafx3
it's not even like "there isn't a game in existence that could harness that kind of power".
it's more like "there is nothing. period. that can harness that kind of power".
@bazookafx3 Lol I've been wanting that $400 foot massager that's there for years
@niZmo Oh man me too, I would love to place one of those under my work desk!
@Wiggy Fuzz
CORRECTION:
There is NOTHING you could EVER want to do, in your whole life, that could harness this kind of power. Period.
It would take 20 years for to gameing industry to even need a quarter of that potential power, but I can think of several boring scientific and mathematical applications that could definiately use this and LOVE the idea of a sub $10K supercomputer.
Holy shit batman.
@Oli D
What he said!
@Oli D
Yeah? But can it play Cry-- oh, don't worry...
Jesus Christ.
Is there anything even ready for this? Like a case that won't melt?
On another note, I thought photography was an expensive hobby...
@A Brown Kid
it is an expensive hobby. you need a DSLR camera with lenses that is probably worth 3x this mother board and you're going to need this motherboard, 2x i7-980x, 48GB of RAM, 4x GPUs, and probably 2 1KW PSUs to power this monstrocity all to edit your photos ;)
@wako it is an expensive hobby. you need a DSLR camera with lenses that is probably worth 3x this mother board and you're going to need this motherboard, 2x i7-980x, 48GB of RAM, 4x GPUs, and probably 2 1KW PSUs to power this monstrocity all to edit your photos ;)
Ahah, I'm a fairly new photographer, and haven't spent anywhere near that much.
And I think they're both fairly expensive.
My old Q6600 will have to suffice, haha.
@A Brown Kid, I'm pretty much confident that my CM Stacker wouldn't melt...
@incognito
Prove it :D