Supermicro 5046A-XB arrives, Workstation Review Opinions Requested...
by Gary Key on January 21, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gary's First Looks
We received numerous emails and forum messages after our last X58 articles requesting that we take a different look at this platform. One that is not consumer/gaming oriented and instead focuses on the workstation capabilities of Intel's latest platform featuring the i7/X58. With that in mind we have been working diligently on a new test suite oriented towards the workstation crowd. The problem we discovered is that one could end trying to procure and test so many various programs that the review never gets done.
Believe me, that is one bad habit of mine after reviewing my initial rough draft for our first user experience article. After melding a few spreadsheets, pasting together all of the test notes, and looking at the results, it hit me that we had tested 83 different components, 22 games, and 37 different applications, not too mention a dizzying combination of hardware combinations for the memory and overclock results. The outcome is that this article is now under the editor's knife for obvious reasons. Probably the primary reason is to keep the reader awake and focused on the actual motherboard being reviewed, which happens to be the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P before we move on the 790GX/GF9300 products.
So, for those readers who are passionate about viewing workstation results, we would like to hear from you again. Mainly, what are your top three to five programs that you would like to see tested on this platform. While we have procured several video/audio content creation applications along with other business centric programs, we fully realize there is diversity in the workstation market. With that in mind, we want to focus our efforts on providing relevant coverage and results for the top applications where possible. We use the word possible, as procuring a $40K seat license for a particular CAD/CAM package will probably be outside our current scope as one example. Also, we want to tailor the test suite to the hardware received for review.
That said, the wizards over at Super Micro Computer, Inc. sent us their new 5046A-XB bare bones workstation. This kit features the C7X58 motherboard, a high quality 865W power supply, custom designed cooling system, pre-configured Hot-Swappable drive setup, and a Tower case that feels as if it were built out of granite. The base bare bone 5046A-XB MSRP is around $900 and will vary depending upon the options chosen. Based on current test results, this Supermicro solution is a bargain to us.
We are still wrestling with our first 24GB memory kits (not a board problem), but all of our initial tests indicate that Supermicro has done a wonderful job with this platform. We have not needed or required multiple BIOS releases for stable operation, the custom cooling system is very quiet, the case is easy to work with and the internal wiring is impeccable. As an added bonus, the hot-swappable bays are a breeze to use, especially considering the number of times we installed and removed some firmware challenged Seagate drives. We are still working on 24GB memory results and some additional digital content creation tests, but performance has been flawless so far.
To say we are pleased at this point would be a serious understatement. Besides a meticulous design, customer service and technical support has been superb to date. We will be back with a full review, but this product already has our blessing. In the meantime, drop us a note and let us know your opinions on workstation benchmarks.
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Draven31 - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
Don't bother with POVRay. Get real apps. Either use eval licenses, or talk to the vendors. Use scenes that come on the software CD, or use scenes you create or have created for you, but have those scenes available on the site. CineBench, and the usual suspects of SPEC ViewPerf benchmarks...Amiga500 - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
+1 on thatContact the vendors (ANSYS, MSc or Dassault Simulia to name a few). Let them know of your situation, and why you want to benchmark - improve the effectiveness of their software for their customers through using more appropriate hardware.
They may give you academic licenses as your work is completely non-proprietary.
It also is some free advertising (of sorts) for their wares on a website with a large and technically astute audience.
Amiga500 - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
Oh, and software areas I would like to see evaluated:FEA (i.e. one of MSc Nastran/ANSYS Mechanical/DS Simulia Abaqus)
[tests mainly FPU performance and I/O performance)
CFD (ANSYS CFX/ANSYS Fluent/Star-CD)
[tests mainly FPU and memory bandwidth]
ElAngelo - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
Not sure if this fits in a workstation benchmark... but I would like to a minimal testing of virtual machine capability...Right now i'm looking to set up a lab with some virtualized machine and i really no longer know what to choose... i7? phenomII? quad core 2? I'm tempted to go for phenomII as i think it will have better performance in virtualization then the quad core 2 while still being considerably cheaper than an i7 (which would prolly shine in virt tests as well)
but maybe this is something for it.anandtech.com
ElAngelo - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
maybe just a vmmark? it's seems very hard to find any vmmarks on the i7 while imho it should shine in that benchmark?BiscuitMonster - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
It would be great if you could test some photo-related apps as well. Things like exporting large numbers of raw files from Lightroom 2 into high-quality JPG, or stitching panoramas / merging into HDR from multiple high-res files in Photoshop CS4.Calin - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
As for software for testing workstations... I'd say some kind of CAD/CAM package, some compilation tests, some image generating programs (POVRay), graphic work (Photoshop, filters), and probably some video-related tests. Maybe some syntetic performance tests running on the main system and as a virtual machine.fri2219 - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
1) BLAST2) Maya
3) MATLAB Black-Scholes pricing implementation
MGSsancho - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
I know this would be difficult to test but at work I test everything in VMs. i might have an XP VM machine or so open that's for training other in tech support how to help others (teach noobs how to set up web cames etc), then ill have a VM of oracle on solaris, then an ubuntu vm with a mirror of current web site, another vm to run on said solaris vm. I understand this would be hard but I do think many of up use VMs a lot for testing. for me they do not use too much CPU just lots of ram. oracle requires minimum 512mb. Then I minimize all that an have photoshop open with dreamweaver in the mix. so for me Its just lots of apps that have varying degrees of useage. sometimes its opening a 4gb tarball, with some VMs in the background testing software while im using photoshop. Then someone comes in and wants a DVD we made into a format to be put on the site so that needs encoding. again it would be awsome if you could find a test for people who just runs lots of stuff that eats up ram.Anyways looking forward to a review. you already answered 1 question Gary, RAS. nothing like opening my box and replacing an optical drive or disc drive in seconds
gomakeit - Thursday, January 22, 2009 - link
I'm interested in some number crunching tests. I work on scientific simulations and raw computation power is important to me. The famous folding-at-home would be a easy test. Just measure simulation duration per wall-clock and cpu-clock hour. If possible I'd also like to see some quantum mechanical calculations based on the venerable Gaussian 03 package (relatively cheap) using its test suite.