The Supermicro X11SPA-T Review: An Impressive Cascade Lake Workstation Motherboard
by Gavin Bonshor on January 24, 2020 9:00 AM ESTGaming Performance
AoTS Escalation
Ashes of the Singularity is a Real-Time Strategy game developed by Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment. The original AoTS was released back in March of 2016 while the standalone expansion pack, Escalation, was released in November of 2016 adding more structures, maps, and units. We use this specific benchmark as it relies on both a good GPU as well as on the CPU in order to get the most frames per second. This balance is able to better display any systematic differences in gaming as opposed to a more GPU heavy title where the CPU and system don't matter quite as much. We use the default "Crazy" in-game settings using the DX11 rendering path in both 1080p and 4K UHD resolutions. The benchmark is run four times and the results averaged then plugged into the graph.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story.
One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 3 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
31 Comments
View All Comments
Tomatotech - Saturday, January 25, 2020 - link
I don’t have prices to hand but there has been discussion that the Mac Pro is competitively priced compared to buying the same parts yourself.As said above, if you want Apple, get the Mac Pro. If your time is valuable, get it pre-built with a support contract that probably costs an extra $5k+ (which is very worth it for commercial buyers).
I’d say only build this kind of system yourself if your time isn’t worth much - but then you wouldn’t be able to afford it - or if you have free support eg graduate students to farm it out to.
FunBunny2 - Saturday, January 25, 2020 - link
"I don’t have prices to hand but there has been discussion that the Mac Pro is competitively priced compared to buying the same parts yourself."That's always true; BigCorps buy in bulk and therefore at lower unit cost. There's a reason Amazon is killing local stores, and that's it. Trouble is, either consumers ignore the transport cost, or Amazon eats it. So far, it's mostly the latter. (e-tail will, in due time, devolve into supplying only low volume niche products that aren't profitable to stock locally.) Also, it turns out, in recent years most (i.e. more than 50%) of Amazon's turnover is from other vendors. Don't know how much Amazon's cut is, but the notion of 'central purchasing' beating on price might not be a given.
Death666Angel - Monday, January 27, 2020 - link
For some mid range configurations, the price is maybe okay. But you really should not upgrade the SSD or RAM at all via Apple, as far as I know, since the prices are steep. And the entry level is 5k for an 8 core, I believe?I stand by it, if you need MacOS, get Apple, otherwise why get a product that locks you into using Intel CPUs and AMD GPUs, both of which are not the be all end all these days in performance. Apple support also seems questionable with the Pro products, compared to other companies. Plus, if you don't need MacOS, chances are you need Windows or Linux and those don't run great (at all) on the Mac Pro.
And my "build it yourself" was not meant as a stict "get all the cheapest parts from 5 different vendors, then assemble it and test out all the edge cases". This isn't LTT. But not going with Apple allows you the freedom to check out all the classic workstation vendors and boutiques, look for the combination of CPU, GPU, RAM and storage that fits your needs with an OS and applications you actually use and then decide which brand you trust most and see who has competitive pricing.
peevee - Monday, January 27, 2020 - link
Is it the same company which has integrated Chinese spy chips on its boards?HoLiFuc - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 - link
That story was a whole lot of BS, is was already debunked already ages ago by Supermicro and other company's who where supposed to be affected.otherwise - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
That was proven to be false. You might be thinking of Huawei which is still under sanctions for these claims.ender8282 - Monday, January 27, 2020 - link
Why no thread ripper comparisons?duploxxx - Thursday, January 30, 2020 - link
Because that would scratch half of the Intel benches from the graphHollyDOL - Tuesday, January 28, 2020 - link
Is it just me or is the board much more visually clean (layout wise, no rubbish etc.) than mainstream boards?Xajel - Tuesday, January 28, 2020 - link
I wish we see more mainstream workstation boards, things for Z390, X570 & TRX40 also...