EVGA Classified SR-2

Zitat: The EVGA SR-2 is a unique product because it straddles both the enthusiast and professional markets equally. What’s more, unlike earlier attempts at overclockable dual-processor motherboards, such as the Intel D5400XS, the SR-2 isn’t restricted to using safe, but slow server memory, as it can use either registered ECC DDR3 or standard unbuffered DDR3. The former is what we’d recommend using if you’re only planning a mild overclock, say a few hundred megahertz, and want the best possible data integrity. However, for big overclocks, you’ll need to use unbuffered DDR3, as the memory industry has yet to manufacture any registered ECC DDR3 faster than 1,333MHz. The only thing we’d strongly warn against is running the SR-2 24/7 with lots of graphics cards without upgrading its cooling. This is because the stock heatsink and fan struggles to keep the chipset, Southbridge and two PCI-E controllers cool enough under heavy load, crashing after 15 to 20 minutes unless we positioned a screaming 2,000rpm fan blowing air over it. Fortunately, although we were unable to secure a sample in time for this review, EK has just launched a two-part waterblock for the SR-2, the EK-FB SR2, which is already on sale at Scan in the UK and Sidewinder Computer Systems in the US. For professionals seeking a way to boost the performance of their workstations the SR-2 is capable of rendering/calculating at a rate previously only delivered by hideously expensive and noisy quad-processor servers. However, unless you absolutely must have the fastest system possible, we don’t recommended many readers going out and buying a pair of top-bin 3.33GHz Xeon X5680s for £2,517. Instead, you should opt for a far cheaper pair of mid-range 2.66GHz Xeon X5650s for £1,510 and overclock them to the same or greater speed as the X5680s. Given that the SR-2 is very similarly priced to non-overclockable dual Xeon boards, going this route would save your business a healthy £1,007. Don’t forget either that the SR-2 has more 16x PCI-E 2.0 slots than any other dual-Xeon board, so if CUDA or CAL is your thing, you can install up to seven professional graphics/GPGPU cards in it. For this combination of reasons we have no hesitation in recommending the EVGA SR-2 to IT professionals. If however as a business you’re worried about the warranty implications of overclocking, then we’d recommend checking out Scan’s various pre-overclocked warranty-backed bundles, reviewed after the SR-2 at the end of this article. As Intel and AMD are so busy pushing up the core count of desktop CPUs, and so few consumer applications can take advantage of more than four cores the SR-2 isn’t a sensible alternative to a single-socket motherboard, especially when the former are more overclockable. That said, if you’re not a fully paid up member of the sensible brigade then the SR-2 is an awful lot of fun to play with. For example, benchmarkers, those enthusiasts who simply buy hardware to compete in benchmark competitions will love the SR-2. Keen folders, or readers who work from home and want a combined workstation/gaming rig should also seriously consider the SR-2 as it’s capable of providing an unparalleled amount of computing power from a desktop-size PC. In closing, the SR-2’s unrivalled ability to set new performance records via the ability to overclock a pair of Xeons plus a small army of graphics cards means it’s the ultimate motherboard and as such should be at the top of every enthusiast’s wishlist.

Zitat: All modded up and ready to go! So far the pretesting of these cards has been somewhat challenging. They certainly don’t want to give up the big clocks easily. All four of the cards individually will do 1250+ on the memory, though the core speed has been anything but straight forward. One of the cards at this point in time will simply not complete a run over 1100, which does not bode well when you consider the extra stress on the setup when we are running everything together. On the other hand, while Matt’s testing of the motherboard and CPUs started off with a few headaches, in the last few days he has been getting a real feel for the board and has both CPUs booting in at 5.3GHz and able to run Vantage at 217 bclocks, which is right where you would want to be in pretesting before we go the whole hog. I’m getting a real sense of anticipation now and can’t wait to get this show on the road and get stuck in giving Matt a hand with his benching. I’ll be back in about a week’s time with a follow up article on how it all went down.

Zitat: Wow. With so many features and an impressive size, it is really difficult not to be impressed by this motherboard. Of course it is targeted to that small niche of super enthusiasts who want to build the fastest PC on Earth. With two Xeon 55xx or 56xx CPUs you will have eight physical cores, but the operating system will recognize your system as having 16 processors due to the Hyper-Threading technology. The motherboard supports up to 48 GB of RAM. And you can install up to four dual-slot video cards to build a four-way SLI or CrossFireX system with all slots working at x16 – usually motherboards that accept three- or four-way SLI/CrossFireX configurations at least one of the slots reduces its speed. That doesn’t happen with this motherboard. The motherboard itself costs USD 600 and gives us a wide range of CPU selection. You can go "budget" and put two Xeon E5506 at USD 238 each or really go ultra high-end by installing two Xeon X5677 at USD 1,750 each. Plus the price of the video cards, case, power supply, a huge video monitor, and so on. If you are rich and crazy about gaming and overclocking this motherboard may be your opportunity to build the fastest PC in your whole state, just to impress your friends. Normal people like us can only sigh and dream. As a final note, we think EVGA should improve their manual and website. Lots of information is missing from the manual (e.g., the real PCI Express configuration, a few undocumented jumpers, info about the triple-BIOS feature, info on the EVBot panel) plus the pictures are very low-quality. We think users paying USD 600 on a motherboard deserve better.