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.

3D Particle Movement Single Threaded

3D Particle Movement MultiThreaded

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.

WinRAR 4.2

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.

FastStone Image Viewer 4.2

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.

Xilisoft Video Converter 7

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.

PovRay 3.7 Multithreaded Benchmark

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.

x264 HD Benchmark Pass 1x264 HD Benchmark Pass 2

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.

Explicit Finite Difference Grid Solver (2D)Explicit Finite Difference Grid Solver (3D)

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.

Implicit Finite Difference Grid Solver (2D)

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.

n-body Simulation via C++ AMP

System Benchmarks Gaming Benchmarks
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  • dstarr3 - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link

    "If a user needs to run seven RAID cards should not be a problem here."

    Is that strictly true without any onboard video?
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link

    Run it headless with desktop remote or Teamviewer over a network.
  • nightbringer57 - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link

    Or a USB video adapter.
  • JlHADJOE - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link

    Can you overclock a Xeon on it?
  • dgingeri - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link

    yes/no. You can control the turbo frequencies on a Xeon though a motherboard, and make it goe full turbo no matter the load, but not go beyond the multiplier range of the chip. So, you could potentially make an E5-2687w v2 go 4GHz on all 8 cores, but not any faster than that. With an E5-2603, you'd still be stuck at 1.8GHz
  • Hale_Kyou - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link

    No! You can't! ASUS says NO. There's not proof in the internet, no screenshot telling it is possible. The only time Xeon was overclocked is in Intel's demo with a test chip.
  • Hale_Kyou - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link

    I.e. neither overclock, nor all-core full turbo. Full 4GHz is not possible.
  • Ian Cutress - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link

    The problem is the CPUs, not the motherboard. In this server space, all the Xeons are locked - you can play around with BCLK at best, although do not expect much headroom. Even the CPU straps (1.00x, 1.25x, 1.66x) are locked down. It's an Intel issue - they do not want to sell unlocked Xeons any more. That being said, a picture was shared on twitter a few months ago by an Intel engineer trying to gauge interest in unlocked Xeons - whether that comes with or without warranty we will have to see, but I wouldn't get any hopes up just yet.
  • jasonelmore - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link

    If i wanted to make a uber machine for the whole family and VM everything to their respective rooms, how would i do this in a "true headless" fashion? ie: no computer required in their room, just a screen and somehow beam video wirelessly to a monitor

    Any solutions exist?
  • extide - Friday, January 10, 2014 - link

    You are talking about a VDi infrastructure, and you do need some sort of very basic pc at each terminal to run the remote desktop connection. Probably not really a great idea for home use, as things like 3d and video do not work very well in that scenario.

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