You know things are changing when cooling units that could once stave off overheating on top-tier graphics cards are starting to show up
on motherboards. EVGA's Classified SR-2 is a
supersized, dual-socket desktop building block that tries to do it all, and -- unusually for dual-CPU logic boards -- it's targeted at enthusiasts rather than buttoned-down business types. Four PCI-Express x16 slots, room for a dozen memory sticks (up to 48GB of RAM), and two USB 3.0 ports add some spec sheet glamor, but you'll likely be wanting to know how much performance you can wring out of two 3.33GHz Intel Xeon 5680 chips working in tandem. The short answer is a lot. The long answer is, of course, that you'll need to apply those 24 threads of power to applications that can really utilize them, such as the predictable video processing and 3D rendering. That's where the multithreaded, multicore, multiprocessor rig really shone in this review, and the EVGA board underpinning it also acquitted itself with distinction. Hit the source for the benchmark results and more photography of exposed circuitry.
posted August 5th 2010 10:06AM
Holy Mackarel. Who needs this?!
@Revolutionary Enthusiasts
@Revolutionary In the article it says it's aimed at enthusiasts..
@Revolutionary what does it really mean to need something? Who really needs any type of computer?
It's a luxury, and all about want. ...and I really WANT this.
@scooterbaga
There are certain lines of work where this type of power is a requirement to complete your objectives in a reasonable amount of time, so yes, there are people with a "need" for something like this.
That said, those people are probably going to buy a Dell (like I did) or HP workstation, making this board somewhat of an odd-ball piece.
@Revolutionary I own this motherboard and it was worth every penny. I do a lot of number crunching and anybody who builds computers with dual socket motherboards knows this is worth every penny. A typical 2 socket motherboard will cost you around $400, but has very limited capabilities.
1. you cannot overclock a typical server motherboard. There is no potential to overclock in the BIOS. You cannot add custom heatsinks because they use xeon brackets. This motherboard not only comes with x58 lga1366 brackets, but has full overclock capabilities for an extreme user. This alone is worth the $200 extra because i can save more than $1000 overclocking the processors instead of buying higher clocked ones.
2. Most server motherboards have limited features. a typical server motherboard will have only a handful of USB ports, an ethernet jack, serial/parallel jack, ps2, and maybe an audio out. This comes with everything. USB 3.0, sata 6gb/s, esata, dual gigabit, high def audio, etc. Not only that, but it comes with 7 PCIE-x16 ports.
3. A lot of them arent really that good quality and dont typically use high end components. They are also plagued with lots of problems. this EVGA motherboard has a great PWM, uses high quality parts like 100% solid state capacitors, etc. So far i have had no issues with this motherboard.
For an Enthusiant whos jsut gonna play games on this thing, it may not be worth the price. But for anyone whos doing any sort of professional work, this thing is worth every penny.
@Jason Litka Maybe they have a job that needs dual CPUs, and they want to build their own computer?
@scooterbaga
My modest 2 and a half year old $4000 rig destroys things people buy even today.
@Revolutionary Umm... that's what's "Classified."
@Revolutionary
At first I thought it said 4GBs of RAM.... then I re-read and saw 48.... wtf!? Do want...
@Revolutionary
Can we stop using the word "enthusiasts" for people who seat at home and play video games all day long.
@Revolutionary Bender.... this is pr0n for him :-)
@Kurian Modest $4000 ermm yea ok that's modest all right
@Revolutionary Can I get email on that thing?
@Revolutionary I do...
@Zyren
Thanks for the input, but have they solved the performance issues that plagues the Mac Pro? I know the overclocking makes a huge difference, but what about the memory limitations?
The real question for enthusiasts is do you really gain more from two individual quads over a top of the line six-core single processor?
In the past, the single faster processor dominated.
@Sea Urchin actually most of the guys who buy these (basing this off a couple of my friends) care more about having the highest benchmark score tied to their anonymous sounding user name on some website that no one but other guys doing the same thing care about.
(whatever floats your boat i guess....but dropping an extra 1000 to score 100 more points on some pointless test doesn't make sense to me)
That said, if you have the money, and it makes you happy, why not?
@Revolutionary
I don't need it, but Daddy Like. Daddy Like, a lot!
This has to be one of the sweetest COTS motherboards I have seen outside of some of the Sun/Oracle pieces.
@Revolutionary
I need this in my life...stat.
@Zyren
It has 7 physical PCI-E 16x slots, but a max of 36 lanes due to the 5520 chipset.
@Revolutionary Anybody which thinks in playing 3D Direct X11 games, 3D Bluray movies, 7.1 audio channel Onkyo receiver for the next 4/5 years will need motherboards like this one. No matter what people say about the desktop is dead, it will never be since the newer Direct X11 games will come in Blu-ray format, are more than 20 GB of size, and don't think you have a chance to download this from the Internet right? For external devices like 2TB hard drives, USB 3.0 is great since it would let you transfer files faster than Firewire.
@Zyren no pci no sale.
i ned pci for my soundcard (creative x-fi) my wireless adapter, and other things.
the only pci e device i have is my video card thats stil kicking ass on my core2 4ghz. no thanks.
if i had thousands of dollars maybe.
@Revolutionary
*raises hand* One please.
"Need"? I don't NEED this but I'll take it and slap a pair of 6-core processors, a pair of GTX 480s and a pair of Fermi-based Teslas in it.
Om nom nom nom.
Sure, my office will sound like a jet engine testing facility, but at least my renders will be lightning quick.
@CRA1G The board itself wont make more then 5db, and everything with stock fans, GPU and CPU wont actually make that much more sound then a normal pc. But I am suspecting since this is for enthusiasts in the first place, they are likely to watercool everything anyways.
@CRA1G mmmmm dual CPU....aaaarrrggghhhhhhh!!!!!
@MoonWalkerCTE This board, during oc testing, was actually put under ln2 and lh.
@CRA1G
But will they REALLY? What are the benchmarks of this versus an equivalent cost overclocked six core system and GPU rendering in GPU accelerated 64bit CS5?
For example, on my systems when I jumped from 4GB to 8GB of RAM, I was not able to sustain as high an overclock.
Even if this does overclock then for example, are you going to be able to get as stable and high an OC as on a single processor? Don't you run into lowest-common-denominator and heat issues? And the extra savings can be applied to the system elsewhere (faster SSDs or GPU).
More is not always better.
And lets not forget that traditionally, Xeon pricing SUCKS ASS, and you have to buy two of them. And I'm not talking about being cheap, but being able to spend the money elsewhere to be faster overall.
That is the point after all, if I have $X budget, no matter how high or low that is, whats the fastest system for the vast majority of my intended work load.
@CRA1G I'm Pretty sure CS5 was written to be optimized for the i series architecture, not Xeon.
Every bench mark ive seen a single i7 PC or iMac beats a dual core Xeon Mac Pro.
@Ducman69 Different parts for different needs dude. and cs5 w/e aint gonna make use of 2 cpus as much as rendering from 3d apps like maya or max or modo. depending on your work, you may have your cpu as your bottleneck. i kno i do. so goin dual may be well worth it. jus sayin
@MoonWalkerCTE
forget water cooling just dunk it in a bigger fish tank with mineral oil than this one
http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php
@SirNoDroin
The Nehalem-series Xeons are virtually the same as the i7 series CPUs. The biggest difference is the Xeon supports ECC memory. There may be some other differences like QPI speeds, too, but overall they're not that different.
To put it one way, there isn't anything in an i7 that isn't in a Xeon, but there are things in a Xeon that aren't in the i7.
If you're comparing an i7 to a Harpertown Xeon, then you'll most definitely find a difference.
@manofchao5 Have a look at the new V3 that showed up July 29th for eATX boards: http://www.pugetsystems.com/aquarium-computer.php
I feel like water cooling is a necessity in whatever computer fully utilizes this thing, otherwise the fans would probably make it fly away
@DrTrent
we have a couple boxes in my office that run high frequency structural simulator solutions as their sole purpose of being. One of them had a Thermaltake CL-W0042 liquid cooling setup which recently died. We put a Zalman CNPS9700LED in the rig to replace it and it's doing an OK job and isn't all that noisy.
I want this because it will take me at least 5 years to get all the components to max it out all without having to get a new motherboard.
I was going to post that there are 7 PCI-Express x16 slots; turns out there's a max of 4, or 6 x8 slots + 1 x16. Oh, the joys of reading the source!
Must be a typo since I count 7 PCI-Express x16 slots, not 4.
@fadeddeath do you blame them..their vision was blurred and their hands were shaking as they were writing this article! Holy benchmarks Batman!
@fadeddeath
It will only recognize 4 PCI-E x16 slots maximum, or 6 PCI-E x8 + 1 PCI-E x16.
@fadeddeath
It's a limitation of the chipset -- it cannot provide that many PCIe lanes at the same time.
Hot piss!!!
>Nerdgasm<
I'm not sure why you'd buy this over a good Supermicro or other multi-socket server motherboard. Quadruple SLI maybe?
At least with the server board you can support ECC memory, IPMI, and the onboard NICs will be good (Intel) as opposed to the Realtek crap that they put on most consumer motherboards these days.
@Metaluna This supports ECC memory, and it uses a marvell gigabit controller, not realtek. As for IPMI, not sure if it has it or not but for the target i dont think it would be necessary.
Yes Fail @ Engadget... This is a month or two old as i've had it for that amount of time maybe older. Yes it's pricey but i tell you something it's well worth the cash!!! i have two quad cores in it with 24GB of ram and some nvidia 295's in QUAD SLI, 4 SSD 120gb.
I get around 12.6ghz of power from my cores nothing has ever maxed it apart from doing a "thresh" test.
If you get this make sure you get a 2000w PSU!!! ofc ;-)
@Inchigh
If you believe 2.6GHz*2=5.2GHz you fail at life.
@tobsmonster2
I've you've ever worked with VMware products like ESX, they use a metric like that (adding up the CPU freqs) to measure how much capacity you have/using to run your VMs. I'm not saying it's right or accurate, I'm just pointing out that this seems to be a new kind of trend.
@Inchigh
If you've never maxed out your CPU cycles, aren't you wasting money on all that compute power by definition?