ASUS P9X79-E WS Review: Xeon meets PLX for 7x
by Ian Cutress on January 10, 2014 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Asus
- Workstation
- X79
- Prosumer
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things – better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal), at the expense of heat and temperature, but also gives in essence an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, memory subtimings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk which is clearly visible, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the purchase.
Using our consumer level i7-4960X CPU, the P9X79-E WS does implement MultiCore Turbo when XMP is enabled. This gives a full 4.0 GHz CPU power under any loading.
Point Calculations - 3D Movement Algorithm Test
The algorithms in 3DPM employ both uniform random number generation or normal distribution random number generation, and vary in various amounts of trigonometric operations, conditional statements, generation and rejection, fused operations, etc. The benchmark runs through six algorithms for a specified number of particles and steps, and calculates the speed of each algorithm, then sums them all for a final score. This is an example of a real world situation that a computational scientist may find themselves in, rather than a pure synthetic benchmark. The benchmark is also parallel between particles simulated, and we test the single thread performance as well as the multi-threaded performance.
The P9X79-E WS results come across as very efficient in our 3DPM ST test, with none of the issues we found with the RIVBE coming through.
Compression - WinRAR 4.2
With 64-bit WinRAR, we compress the set of files used in the USB speed tests. WinRAR x64 3.93 attempts to use multithreading when possible, and provides as a good test for when a system has variable threaded load. WinRAR 4.2 does this a lot better! If a system has multiple speeds to invoke at different loading, the switching between those speeds will determine how well the system will do.
Image Manipulation - FastStone Image Viewer 4.2
FastStone Image Viewer is a free piece of software I have been using for quite a few years now. It allows quick viewing of flat images, as well as resizing, changing color depth, adding simple text or simple filters. It also has a bulk image conversion tool, which we use here. The software currently operates only in single-thread mode, which should change in later versions of the software. For this test, we convert a series of 170 files, of various resolutions, dimensions and types (of a total size of 163MB), all to the .gif format of 640x480 dimensions.
Again, the P9X79-E WS blasts past the RIVBE here due to the turbo issue.
Video Conversion - Xilisoft Video Converter 7
With XVC, users can convert any type of normal video to any compatible format for smartphones, tablets and other devices. By default, it uses all available threads on the system, and in the presence of appropriate graphics cards, can utilize CUDA for NVIDIA GPUs as well as AMD WinAPP for AMD GPUs. For this test, we use a set of 33 HD videos, each lasting 30 seconds, and convert them from 1080p to an iPod H.264 video format using just the CPU. The time taken to convert these videos gives us our result.
Rendering – PovRay 3.7
The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.
Video Conversion - x264 HD Benchmark
The x264 HD Benchmark uses a common HD encoding tool to process an HD MPEG2 source at 1280x720 at 3963 Kbps. This test represents a standardized result which can be compared across other reviews, and is dependent on both CPU power and memory speed. The benchmark performs a 2-pass encode, and the results shown are the average of each pass performed four times.
Grid Solvers - Explicit Finite Difference
For any grid of regular nodes, the simplest way to calculate the next time step is to use the values of those around it. This makes for easy mathematics and parallel simulation, as each node calculated is only dependent on the previous time step, not the nodes around it on the current calculated time step. By choosing a regular grid, we reduce the levels of memory access required for irregular grids. We test both 2D and 3D explicit finite difference simulations with 2n nodes in each dimension, using OpenMP as the threading operator in single precision. The grid is isotropic and the boundary conditions are sinks. Values are floating point, with memory cache sizes and speeds playing a part in the overall score.
Interestingly something seems to be holding back the 2D Explicit numbers.
Grid Solvers - Implicit Finite Difference + Alternating Direction Implicit Method
The implicit method takes a different approach to the explicit method – instead of considering one unknown in the new time step to be calculated from known elements in the previous time step, we consider that an old point can influence several new points by way of simultaneous equations. This adds to the complexity of the simulation – the grid of nodes is solved as a series of rows and columns rather than points, reducing the parallel nature of the simulation by a dimension and drastically increasing the memory requirements of each thread. The upside, as noted above, is the less stringent stability rules related to time steps and grid spacing. For this we simulate a 2D grid of 2n nodes in each dimension, using OpenMP in single precision. Again our grid is isotropic with the boundaries acting as sinks. Values are floating point, with memory cache sizes and speeds playing a part in the overall score.
Point Calculations - n-Body Simulation
When a series of heavy mass elements are in space, they interact with each other through the force of gravity. Thus when a star cluster forms, the interaction of every large mass with every other large mass defines the speed at which these elements approach each other. When dealing with millions and billions of stars on such a large scale, the movement of each of these stars can be simulated through the physical theorems that describe the interactions. The benchmark detects whether the processor is SSE2 or SSE4 capable, and implements the relative code. We run a simulation of 10240 particles of equal mass - the output for this code is in terms of GFLOPs, and the result recorded was the peak GFLOPs value.
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mapesdhs - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
Makes perfect sense if you need to build something now. :D I've been talking to a movie
guy who's about to construct something based on this E revision. Similar to mine but better
GPUs, beginning with one 780Ti, expanding to 4 later. Only slight hitch is I've been trying
to convince him to use a Corsair H110 for the CPU instead of a big HS, the latter making
transport more difficult. Either way, it'll be a good AE system until he switches to a dual-socket
24-core XEON setup next year.
The only thing really missing from X79 (apart from a proper 8-core consumer chip option)
is more Intel SATA3 ports which don't suffer from the perils one can encounter with Marvell
ports. Both performance and reliability are better with the Intel ports, in some cases by a
huge margin. People harp on about USB3, but a lot of pro users I know rarely use it and if
they do need a USB link they're usually happy with USB2. Depends on the task though of
course, I'm sure some would find it important.
Ian.
almajnall - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
hidzezik - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link
if You compare this funny mobo with professional supermicro e.g. X9SRL-F (7 PCIe slots for server use) or X9SRA for workstation it looks like a toy for kids. ASUS uses a lot of tricks but it cant overcome 40 lanes limitation from single CPU. motherboard is to complicated. 64GB of RAM is the limit? something is wrong with ASUS, Supermicro support 512GB. If You go for XEON chose Supermicro and Tyanmazzy80 - Friday, February 21, 2014 - link
Actually the SM boards look more like demo sample that a real board with so few surface Caps, Mosfet that this Board. :)The reality that they're not necessary to run the system at stock with the wide margin on Xeon about voltages.
BTW, the 64GB limit is about UDIMM Vs RDIMM, only on the C600 series the RDIMM & UDIMM are supported, on X79 only UDIMM.
P.S.
SM rocks, you can't really go wrong with them for WS/Server rig.
Hale_Kyou - Tuesday, March 4, 2014 - link
The 64 Gb limitation is in Intel Xeon and i7 CPUs, the same. For buffered memory. 500-700 Gb are supported with buffered memory on E5 Xeons only (E7 have hybrid controllers with external components). Buffered memory is MUCH slower than unbuffered due to penalties introduced by buffer and its latent logic. The same, inter-CPU RAM access introduces big penalties on multicore Xeon sustems. That's why sometimes (generally in HPC simulations) single core system with unbuffered RAM is preferred.Hale_Kyou - Tuesday, March 4, 2014 - link
there's a typo. Of course 64Gb limitation is for unbuffered RAM both in Xeon and i7. The limitation is removed on latest server-oriented Atoms.EdB1 - Thursday, July 31, 2014 - link
Hi djezik, although your post is fairly old, I had a look at the two board you mentioned, and they don't have the same PCI-E lanes expansion capabilites as the P9X79-E WS board, which has 72 PCI-E lines, due to 2 additional PLX chips, and can run at 16x x 4 slots at full speed or 2 x 16x and 5 x 8x, the two boards you mentioned do have greater mem capacity though, ie; 512GB ECC vs 64GB ECC or non ECC.So it really depends what you need this board to do. If you want to put 4 x 16X graphics cards in at once and don't need more than the 64GB ram limit, then this is the board to get, but if you do need more that the 64GB then the ASUS should not be considered.
Hale_Kyou - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link
Liars! x79 DOE NOT support "full turbo mode (4.0 GHz) no matter the loading""One new feature called ASUS Ratio Boost is in the BIOS, which implements MultiCore Turbo for Xeon CPUs"
Is a lie, according to ASUS itself. I don't know why did they trick people this dirty way. Maybe Intel pays them for spreading weird rumors. But ASUS says that turbo bins can not be reconfigured on their boards for XEON CPUs!
Hale_Kyou - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link
P.S. Of course it works on i7, that's why they lied about Xeon, but "proofed" with screenshots only with i7X running "all core full turbo".ReneGQ - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
I recently purchased an Asus Motherboard and the problems started from day 1. The drivers update never works, the same for AI Suite III (there´s a lot of updates for this model in Asus webpage). After 2 months I still can´t install BitDefender cause a clock watchdog error.Asus technical support is the worst, mails comes and goes with no solution.
I will not recommend this brand to anyone. The brand has a very good Marketing but the product and the service are very disappointment.