Gigabyte low power dual Xeon in mini size

AS WE'VE SEEN in our high end system component reviews recently, total power consumption - whether at idle or under full load - is gaining in the system evaluation points priority in addition to the usual performance, price and features factors. Besides Asus and Supermicro, Gigabyte also offers a top-notch yet compact dual Xeon server and workstation mainboard that can provide high performance while keeping power consumption low and size down.

The Gigabyte 7TCSV2 mainboard uses the CEB 12x10.5-inch format, basically the same as ATX - including the mounting holes - just roughly a centimetre deeper, so it fits into most high end ATX cases. Unlike the Asus Z8 series, Gigabyte's board provides for a full 24+8+8 power supply connector set. In fact, it seems to require it if using both CPUs, even in the low power versions. The board has a total of six DDR3 memory DIMM sockets for up to 48GB of RAM using 8GB registered ECC modules - that's one DIMM per each CPU memory channel. However, it works just fine with normal non-ECC desktop budget DDR3-1333 modules as well, as long as it's set for 1.5V operation, as there is no memory (or any other) overclocking and overvolting available here. However keep in mind that, in that case, the total memory capacity is limited to 24GB with six 4GB modules.

Do note that, according to Gigabyte documentation, the board supports 130W CPUs as well, such as the Intel Xeon X5680 high end entry - a welcome benefit for those users who want a very high performance compact workstation - compared to the Asus Z8 entry which is limited to lower clocked 95W CPU SKUs, up to the Intel Xeon X5670.

Feature-wise, there's one PCIe x16 v2 slot suitable for 3D graphics cards, although the board also has a basic 2D Matrox G200e GPU integrated as well for server applications. Two additional PCIe x8 v2 - but just x4 signaling - slots are there for RAID, interconnect or SSD cards, plus one x1 for, say, a good sound card, as there was no onboard sound, and one old 32-bit PCI 33MHz slot. The northbridge or IOH used here is the Tylersburg 24, or Intel 5500, with 24 PCIe v2 lanes, not the big brother Tylersburg 36, or Intel 5520, with 36 lanes, that is found on larger mainboards.

There's a built-in Serverengine Pilot II management chip with IPMI 2.0 support. Twin Gigabit Ethernet controllers - an Intel 82567LM plus another 82574L GbE chip - are there for dual Gigabit network support. And, yes, there's still a good old RS-232 serial interface too. So, all in all, there are pretty good quality peripheral interfaces available for integration. And if you want more storage, Gigabyte offers an 8-port SAS 6Gbps Hardware RAID add-on card too.

You can also see the variety of unusual BIOS options on the motherboard below.

Since we did test low power Nehalem-EP 45nm Xeons in the last round on an Asus mainboard, I wanted to check how low we can go in power consumption with the newest 6-core Westmere-EP low power Xeons in a pair for, basically, a power-saving 12-core workstation. Intel has low voltage 60W L5640 Xeon processors for this. They run at 2.26GHz, 2.4GHz in Turbo, and have a full 12MB L3 cache per CPU. However QPI is limited to 5.86 GT/sec speed while memory is still at full speed DDR3-1333. This is understandable if one is focusing on low power, of course, since QPI does take up some juice, but the low voltage 1.35V and 1.2V DDR3-1333 is already available.

Do note Intel's changed numbering scheme here. A normal power 80W E5640 Xeon is actually a 2.66GHz 4-core CPU, not a 2.26GHz 6-core CPU like the L5640. Its memory support is also limited to DDR3-1066. So, the "E" and "L" Xeon part numbers don't follow the same speed reference here. Interestingly, the 95W X5650 Xeon is also a 2.66GHz CPU but with all six cores enabled. While I guess Intel wanted the actual CPU number monikers to reflect overall total performance in a better way, this might confuse quite a few users. Ensuring that one of the digits reflects the actual number of cores, and another few the actual clock speed, might have been simpler.

Back to the power consumption results. At boot in BIOS, the board with two L5640 processors, 24GB of Crucial low voltage 1.35V DDR3-1333 ECC RAM, and an Intel X25-M SSD, as well as an Nvidia Quadro FX3800 card, the whole kit consumes 97 watts at idle and 163 watts when running 3Dmark Vantage. In the Sandra 2010 CPU benchmark, where graphics is a little less used feature, I saw 137 watts on the trusty old MGE 500W LCD meter screen equipped test PSU. As for that Sandra CPU benchmark with Hyperthreading on, the results were, at 231 Dhrystone GIPS for integer, and 162 DP GFLOPs for floating point, roughly two thirds of the highest performing, but more power guzzling, X5680 dual Xeon, which, again, this board should support too, possibly the only small sized dual Xeon mainboard in the market that can do so at the moment.

In Short
In the Gigabyte 7TCSV2 there's finally one compact ATX-sized board that can take care of the whole dual Xeon workstation and server performance spectrum, from the low power L5640 to the high end X5670, X5680 and its successors in the LGA1366 socket. I do think Gigabyte could do something about easing the BIOS update within the BIOS itself with an easy flashing utility rather than relying on outmoded bootable DOS devices, and quite possibly also add at least USB 3.0, if not SATA3 too, to the system for those users who are into workstation use.

And finally, I'd really like Gigabyte and our other friendly Taiwan OEMs to evolve this compact yet full performance dual CPU workstation segment even further as, early next year, we will see the dual-CPU LGA2011 Sandy Bridge Xeon generation. EVGA did show the way in the overclockable dual Xeon boards too, so how about a small size one? ATX size - give or take an inch - is still the ideal compromise between size and performance. µ

The Good
Compact size, wide CPU support, low power with Intel L5640.

The Bad
Improve the BIOS flashing process, add USB3 and SATA3 as even servers will use them at least for fast storage.

The Ugly
Nothing.

Bartender's Score
8/10