- Saturday, 7 November 2009
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During the antitrust lawsuit, not everyone in our industry raced to support us - Steve 'Understatement' Ballmer
Asus' super motherboard tested
MOTHERBOARDS.ORG has a go at the Asus P6T7 WS Supercomputer mobo. It supports Core i7 or Xeon (Bloomfield) processors and has seven (!) PCIe x16 slots. Octo-or-more-core GPU processing is possible with this monster, as is SAS storage. This is a $500 motherboard, after all.
Tech Gage is testing the Asus Eee PC 1008HA “Seashell” netbook. Glossy and sleek, the Seashell attempts to make the netbook as clean looking as possible, and nails it. As a mate of mine would put it “frickin’ cool”.
Driver Heaven tests MSI’s GX 723 gaming notebook. Slightly underpowered compared to some gaming notebooks out there, the GX 723 is a 17-incher (1680x1050) with a P8600 Core 2 Duo processor 4GB or DDR2-800 and 500GB of storage. It’s driven by a Geforce 130M mobile GPU… *cough*. Rucksack and gaming mouse included.
As Ion-based devices start flooding the market, Benchmark Reviews takes the time to test the Zotac IONITX-A-U Atom N330 WiFi N Motherboard. 100% passively cooled, this DIY kit will get you started on your HTPC project.
Earphone Audio Processors are a bit new to us, but Thrusted Reviews, well got a Tension Labs EAP 03 Earphone Audio Processor to test. This is essentially a headphone amp that plugs in the middle that costs an arm and a leg.
Hot Hardware got some (video) hands-on time with a load of Nvidia kit, namely Lenovo’s S12 Atom+Ion netbook. Tegra also makes a showing in case you just can’t help yourself…
Yes, Core 2 Quad is going the way of the dodo, but in the meantime some nice chaps at Tom’s Hardware found the time to do some memory scaling tests on the processors. So if you aren’t planning on moving to Core i7 anytime soon…
TechARP updates its Desktop CPU comparison guide to revision 7.1. It now covers over 700 processors, which is quite the feat.
German site Technic 3D is testing Scythe’s new Kamariki-series power supply, the KMRK4-P-650A. “P” is for plug-in, meaning it’s all modular. Michael couldn’t have been more impressed with it.
Dexgo, another German site *sigh* has something of a treat for overclockers: Bitspower and Koolance duke it out in liquid cooling systems for the Asus Rampage II Extreme.
Overclockers Club tests the budget-ish ECS X58B-A motherboard. Stock performance is on par with the Tier One brands, but overclocking falls pitifully behind.
Tbreak got some new SSDs in the lab. Enter the OCZ Apex and the Imation M-series SSDs. These two face off in a battle of the wimps (‘cos they get compared to an almighty Intel X25-M SSD).
Finally, Tech Reviews in the UK tests the Coolermaster Hyper N520 PSU. This allows dual-fan operation and great cooling performance. Noise might be an issue, but that is the price - a low one, actually - to pay. µ
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ssd = high £ + low capacity + unreliable
therefore:
ssd buyer = mug
Its 36 Lane Main, so only 2 16X cards will perform at TOP. Specs Are Same for half Dozen X58 Mains. Even though Memory IS Limited by something called "processor", Having ALL that ober specs makes STANDARD setting MUcH More reliable.
You Do Get 4 Lan Ports. For Money Its Blop, VERY, Very, HOT Blop.
. AMD 790FX & Similar AM3 Mains have MUCH more value, Its UNLIKELY only difference peson would see IS $4000 More in price of cpu & memroy & all those cards. So for $4,000.00 More You Get NO More Unless Burning Out Your System Was Idea.AS IT JUST WON'T UBER TAKE IT, EXCEPT MAYBE IN IMAGINATION, IS theUltee' IMAGINATION. Pay Big $$$ for TOP Stuff & Set It To STANDARD Is RESult.Faster, YES, So What.MOSTLY WASTE. Cost of SAS & PovertySpecs, Might Make Grown FeMale, Cry.
vondrashek
I don't see what the benefit of having seven physical x16 PCIE slots would provide if the X58 only provides 32 lanes intended for the slots. I went to reading the article wondering how the heck Asus pulled it off.
Still, if they price it right, why not?
Read the linked article and was confused by this:-
"The board was completely stable throughout testing and the ability to run four dual-GPU cards together will bring the ultimate in performance in games anyway."
Have I missed something can either CrossfireX or SLi now use more than 4 gpu's ?
Quad CrossFireX has been around for a while now on the AMD 790FX chipset which will certainly support upto 4 graphic cards in CrossFire. The top nVidia chipsets will also support 3 way SLI and it is mentioned in the article that this board has two of the nVidia nForce 200 chipsets to essentially drive 2 sets of SLI'd cards and would be very good for several Tesla cards.
What some people seem to fail to remember though, is that PCI-Express x16 slots will support ALL PCI-Express cards right down through 8x, 4x and 1x speed devices such as network cards and SAS/SATA RAID controllers. PCI-X used to be the slot of choice on high end workstation and server boards for RAID and network cards, but PCI-Express is faster and much more versatile in that it is commonly found on all motherboards in some form meaning more devices are made for the interface including sound cards and video cards.
Only 36 PCI-Express lanes does not seem like much, but not all cards used on this board will use up 16 of those lanes... Personally though I think it would have made more sense to have the 4 blue slots as x16 times, and the black ones could have simply been x8 or x4 slots with the amount of available bandwidth on the board...
If you really want fat pipes on your motherboard you should buy a workstation from HP or Dell. The simply combine TWO x58 chipsets on the same motherboards. (Although the x58 is called something else in Xeon systems). Both the CPU and chipset in LGA1366 systems are borne with two QPI interfaces each. Unfortunately one of them is disabled in the desktop version.
Asus is more the cheap hacks for punters company and they don't mind cheating. Amongst other things you should never enable turbo mode on Asus motherboards. They simply abuse it for plain overclocking and don't even ask you first.
Best regards
Tomas
I really agree with Overstar and Tomas, but not with the article concerning the P6T7. Here is what is done in this case : http://www.behardware.com/html/news/?date=28-08-2008#9908
This obviously lead to poor performance when everything is used, 1st of all because of NF200 bandwidth I think (more than the quite huge 3ch DDR3 or QPI bandwidth). This is confirmed in a few SLI benchmarks when using NF200.
As Tomas says, the only way is using a 2 chipsets config, associated of course with multi socket. For Intel it is more likely to be the 5520 chipset than the X58, the 1st one being the workstation version of the 2nd. (see diagram here http://www.behardware.com/html/news/?date=31-03-2009#10143)
This is done in a few machines, like the HP Z800 (dual "Gainestown" Nehalem EP, dual "Tylersburg" chipset). I was looking for the same thing for my work but Dell don't have anything like this. For a cheaper price than the expensive Z800, you can make it yourself, for ex on a Supermicro XD8AH+ (which is a EE-ATX board, a bit bigger than the Ext. ATX standard, so be careful for your case choice) or the smaller Tyan S7025WAGMZNR with less slots but same dual chipset base.