EVGA SR-X Classified Review
Introduction and Technical Specifications
Published: 22nd June 2012 | Source: EVGA | Price: £550est |
Introduction
Now and again you get a bit of hardware that goes down in folklore, bringing burly men to their knees in misty-eyed reminiscence, and the original LGA1366 EVGA SR-2 was one such item.
It burst upon the scene with dual-CPU slots, Quad-SLI potential, and very rapidly showed itself to be the choice for world-record breaking benchmark runs.
So you can imagine the excitement in the OC3D office when we got word that a new model was going to be launched, based upon the massively speedy LGA2011 processors. We couldn't wait to get our hands on it, and as the days ticked down our anticipation grew to fever pitch. Then, just before ours arrived, we heard the first whisperings of discontent from those who had already received theirs. Never a site to let the rumour mill sway our opinion, we finally got ours and set about putting it through the wringer.
So is this a colossus of a sequel to the mighty SR-2, or the sophomore slump?
Technical Specifications
We always pull our technical specifications direct from the manufacturer, and we have to confess that the paucity of information available on the EVGA website doesn't exactly fill us with hope. We're no silicon giants, but if we had a top-end product to try and sell you on we'd do a better job than this. It's akin to us announcing the Xmas Compo without telling you the prizes, entry dates, or how you win.
But hey, if you've got the thick end of 3 large ones to spend on a system, the finer details are unlikely to be a bother. Nobody asks the valve sizes on a Veyron do they.
Performance
Based on Intel C606 chipset
Supports Dual QPI Socket 2011 Intel Xeon E5 Processors
Memory
12 x 240-pin DIMM sockets
Quad Channel DDR3
Maximum of 96GB of DDR3 1600MHz+
Storage I/O
4 x Serial ATA 300MB/sec (4x Internal) with support for RAID 0, RAID1, RAID 0+1, RAID5, RAID10 and JBOD
4 x Serial ATA 600MB/sec (2x Internal + 2x E-SATA) with support for RAID 0 and RAID 1
Integrated Peripherals
8 Channel High Definition
2 x 10/100/1000 LAN
Multi I/O
1 x PS2 Keyboard
6 x USB3.0 ports
10 x USB2.0 ports
Audio connector (Line-in, Line-out, MIC)
FireWire 1394B (1 external)
Form Factor
HPTX Form Factor
Length: 13.6in - 345.4mm
Width: 15in - 381mm
Most Recent Comments
It will look great with the ugly collection of Nctua fans I have! I can make the UGLY TACKY RIG!
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Originally Posted by Rastalovich
This smells of not being a finished product. I envisage a re-review in a number of months. |
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Originally Posted by DT-525
I never understand why anybody would buy a board like this. £500 for a mobo you could spend that money on a 7970 or a 680 that what matters when gaming. the graphics cards are a lot more important no need for two CPU's that are going to cost you £3000. |
kind of a scramble to keep the ship ship-shaped?? its kinda been a teaser year so far, without epic
blow-overs in performance support. small incriments of increase delivery.. just saying..
airdeano
Also,BIOS 15 has been released which has improved it greatly..
But,more importantly,no SR-2 comparison?
i am soooooooooo glad i didn't go down this route
ETA around week 26/27 and nickel pom around week 28/29
http://www.coolercases.co.uk/SR-X/sr-x_mips.jpg
http://www.coolercases.co.uk/SR-X/sr-x_mips_1.jpg
Shame for those who want a dual 2011 xeon build
Whilst I can see the advantages of being able to run two Xeons on the same board (for sheer core count alone) the fact that the new Xeons are un-clockable makes this a strange idea.
To make it worthwhile you would need to buy two Xeons with huge core counts which immediately starts to get very expensive, then you realise that new Xeons are really just the same Sandybridge/Ivybridge CPUs as their desktop counterparts in slightly different flavours (IE - The E3 1220 has the same core count as the I5 2500 but the L3 cache of the I7 2600 with ECC support) .
But the fact remains that other than different cache levels and core counts they are just Sandy/Ivy CPUs underneath it all.
Which begs the question (to me at least) why EVGA have bothered with the Xeons this time around given that you can't clock them, at all
Surely it would have been a better idea to make a board that can support multiple insert regular old chip model here on the same board and have the ability to clock them
I remember at the end of the 90s and into the early noughties several budget type boards that could take multiple CPUs (two usually was the norm). The difference, though, was that these boards could take anything that would fit. At that time it was a choice of Celerons or Coppermine flip chip P3s. You could then up the bus clocks and gain slight overclocks out of them which all made sense if you used Windows 2000.
Abit were the kings of it, and the price was good too, about £140 IIRC.
Not only that but you could use bog standard SDRAM modules too, with no need for ECC support. So I guess that's what I am finding hard to figure out here. Why didn't EVGA design a board that you could throw two 2500ks (for example) onto and then clock them?
And the price? well it's ridiculous. P77 or whatever they are called (and P67 etc) boards don't cost that much. Not like a 2011 or the 1366 before it.
So the only thing this board has going for it is the ability to run a pair of (example) £1500 processors for sheer core count.
Which kind of rules out the enthusiast as there's no gains to be had, and no special techniques to set any records with. All you need is a huge bank balance and a large dose of stupidity.
Which makes it all a bit pointless really. Even more pointless that companies like Supermicro make boards just like this one for around the same price.
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Originally Posted by Fallout3
Very odd this.
Whilst I can see the advantages of being able to run two Xeons on the same board (for sheer core count alone) the fact that the new Xeons are un-clockable makes this a strange idea. To make it worthwhile you would need to buy two Xeons with huge core counts which immediately starts to get very expensive, then you realise that new Xeons are really just the same Sandybridge/Ivybridge CPUs as their desktop counterparts in slightly different flavours (IE - The E3 1220 has the same core count as the I5 2500 but the L3 cache of the I7 2600 with ECC support) . But the fact remains that other than different cache levels and core counts they are just Sandy/Ivy CPUs underneath it all. Which begs the question (to me at least) why EVGA have bothered with the Xeons this time around given that you can't clock them, at all Surely it would have been a better idea to make a board that can support multiple insert regular old chip model here on the same board and have the ability to clock them I remember at the end of the 90s and into the early noughties several budget type boards that could take multiple CPUs (two usually was the norm). The difference, though, was that these boards could take anything that would fit. At that time it was a choice of Celerons or Coppermine flip chip P3s. You could then up the bus clocks and gain slight overclocks out of them which all made sense if you used Windows 2000. Abit were the kings of it, and the price was good too, about £140 IIRC. Not only that but you could use bog standard SDRAM modules too, with no need for ECC support. So I guess that's what I am finding hard to figure out here. Why didn't EVGA design a board that you could throw two 2500ks (for example) onto and then clock them? And the price? well it's ridiculous. P77 or whatever they are called (and P67 etc) boards don't cost that much. Not like a 2011 or the 1366 before it. So the only thing this board has going for it is the ability to run a pair of (example) £1500 processors for sheer core count. Which kind of rules out the enthusiast as there's no gains to be had, and no special techniques to set any records with. All you need is a huge bank balance and a large dose of stupidity. Which makes it all a bit pointless really. Even more pointless that companies like Supermicro make boards just like this one for around the same price. |
The SR 2 doesnt require ECC ram either
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We finally get our hands on the sequel to the insane EVGA SR2, the much anticipated EVGA SR-X Classified.
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