The GIGABYTE Server MW31-SP0 Motherboard Review: A Quick Look at C236
by Ian Cutress on April 21, 2016 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- Xeon
- Enterprise
- C236
CPU Performance, Short Form
For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We leave the BIOS settings at default and memory at JEDEC (DDR4-2133 C15) for these tests, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
Video Conversion – Handbrake v0.9.9: link
Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. For HandBrake, we take a 10min double UHD 3840x4320 animation short and convert it into an x264 format in an MP4 container. Results are given in terms of the frames per second processed, and HandBrake uses as many threads as possible.
Compression – WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7: link
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, 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.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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Samus - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
C232 didn't support vPro? Wow, talk about lack of foresight by Intel...they've been trying to push that as a corporate platform basically since Sandybridge and it wasn't even supported on their server platform?SFNR1 - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
HP uses iLO in their E3 and Intel has the RMM4 for that.Samus - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
The problem with iLO is all the entry level servers (non-E5) have iLO light which is kind of a management joke. Most of the remote management tools require iLO advanced which can be purchased as a license for some servers but not the ML110 because the eprom isn't large enough for the software. Even then, and this is hard for me to admit because in an HP guy, Dell's iDRAC is all around better, and free, like vPro. I'm just surprised vPro was never available on C232. Generally I use remoteKVM for management so this is all moot unless I actually need to hard power off equipment remotely and since I don't manage rack servers across the country that has never come up. Only once in my career have I had to jump in the car and drive somewhere to power a server back on because I accidentally shut it down lol.rtho782 - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
I'd like to see a comparison of SLI performance between this, with the PLX switch, and other boards that split x8/x8.I know this has been done before but nothing with modern CPUs etc.
Vidmo - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
You should also take a look at the Supermicro X11SAT-F as its a much better board than this one or even the Gigabyte X170-Extreme ECC.http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeo...
snakyjake - Sunday, April 24, 2016 - link
Will using software RAID with the dual SATA controllers be an advantage, disadvantage, or no affect?milkod2001 - Monday, April 25, 2016 - link
Are there any mini atx server boards with build in 14nm Atoms/Celerons/Pentium, ECC support for NAS units out there?atlantico - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
Gigabyte, always the last on my list for components. Ugly mobos, terribad BIOS and "ATi CrossfireX support" printed on the mobo. Why not the 3DFX SLI? Dumb and ultimately 3rd rate Gigabyte.The sad thing is that Gigabyte isn't all that much cheaper than others, except in quality.