Review: Gigabyte GA-7PESLX powered by 2x Xeon E5-2470
Category : X79
Published by Christian Ney on 06.09.12
Instead of an enthusiast motherboard, this time we will look at a workstation motherboard. Meanwhile it is not a entry level motherboard, Gigabyte provided us with their latest high end dual socket motherboard which is the mainstream model of this new series. It features up to 384 GB of DDR3 ECC memory running at 1600 MHz, two 8 core / 16 threads processor, a high end LSI SAS controller and more. This time we will not only review the motherboard but also benchmark this dual Xeon Octocore setup under real world workloads/situations.
On the following pages we're going to introduce you to the latest dual socket motherboard from Gigabyte that supports the latest and fastests octocore Xeon E5-2400 series from Intel.
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Specifications / Delivery
| CPU | Dual LGA1356 Socket Supports Intel Xeon processor E5-2400 product family |
| Chipset | Intel C602 |
| Memory | 12 x 1.5V/1.35V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to
96GB (UDIMM) and
384GB (RDIMM) of system memory Tri channel memory architecture Support for 800/1066/1333/1600 MHz Support for ECC RDIMM/ UDIMM |
| Multi-GPU | N/A |
| Slots |
2 x PCIe x16 (@ Gen3 x16 bus) slots 1 x PCIe x8 (@ Gen3 x4 bus) slot 1 x PCIe x8 (@ Gen2 x4 bus) slot 1 x PCIe x4 (@ Gen2 x1 bus) slot |
| Audio | No audio chip |
| Video | Integrated 2D video ASPEED AST2300 More information on the manufacturer's website |
| Storage | 2 x mini-SAS 6Gb/s ports (8 x SAS 6Gbs via LSI SAS2008) 2 x SATA III 6Gb/s ports 4 x SATA II 3Gb/s ports Intel SW RAID 0/1/5/10 LSI IR RAID 0/1/1E/10 |
| LAN | 2 x Gigabit Ethernet LAN (2x Intel
82574L) 1 x KVM Server Management LAN |
| I/O internal |
|
| I/O external | |
| Formfactor | EATX (305 x 330 mm) |
| BIOS | 1 x 64 MB flash AMI BIOS |
| Warranty | 1 year |
| Bundle | 2x SATA II cables 1x Manual 1x CD Drivers 1x I/O Shield |
| On Manufacturer's Website | Gigabyte GA-7PESLX |
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Layout
The Gigabyte GA-7PESLX comes with a non coloured green PCB and black expansion slots. This time not like the GA-7PESH1 we got last time, Gigabyte chose to not add stylish feature like the blue coloured PCB, they keep things simple for this one. Doesn't really matter as you won't see the motherboard anymore once you set it up in the server/workstation. The layout itself is also a bit different, the expansion slots are positioned differently and the sockets are not next to each others.
Gigabyte equipped his workstation motherboard so each CPU is powered by four digital power phases. Furthermore each set of six DIMM memory slots benefits form their own two digital power phases. With a total of 2x 2 digital power phases for the memory and 2x 4 for the processors a reasonable level of sability is being provided. Totally there are eight phases less than on the GA-7PESH1 which is normal given that you have only twelve memory slots vs sixteen and this motherboard is designed for Xeon E5-2400 series that need less power than the E5-2600 series ones. Furthermore Gigabyte went for high quality chokes from Coiltronics. The printing ontop of them reads 1007R3-R27. After checking the datasheets you find that these ferrite core chokes can cope with up to 61 amps.
Totally you'll find two sets of two times three DIMM-slots on the GA-7PESLX which means there are no less than twelve memory slots for an amount of total memory up to 96GB of normal memory and 384GB of Registered memory. Officially supported are the following clock speeds: 1600 / 1333 / 1066 / 800 MHz. Memory slots are quite close to the CPU socket so you won't be able to fit huge cooler on it but that's not a problem because this motherboard is designed for workstation use and worksation memory doesn't have high memory heatspreaders luckily.
Southbridge as well as current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via a passive cooling blocks. But not only, also the LSI chip has an heatsink on to feel more fresh.
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Connectors and I/O
Unlike the GA-7PESH1, there are only two SATA3 ports, additionally you'll find four SATA2 connectors. They are all located at the bottom right of the board. There are also two mini-SAS headers that provide up to eight additional ports. The SAS ports are provided by an LSI 2008 controller, which has been connected to the chipset using eight lanes. Therefore there is plenty of bandwidth for high-performance RAID setups. On the GA-7PESLX you will also find two full size PCIe Gen3 x16 slots (not spaced by one slot this time) with two PCI Express x8 ports working at x4 (one port is Gen3 while the other one is Gen2) and one PCI Express Gen2 x4 expansion slot. Furthermore there is an ASPEED AST2300 onboard 2D video chip that provides a VGA connector without the need to a third party graphics card.
Totally you'll find six fan headers on the Gigabyte GA-7PESLX which are three more than on the GA-7PESH1. This is more than enough for a workstation motherboard because usually workstation fans are directly connected to the power supply. Anyway you will find one cpu1_fan as well as one cpu2_fan located not far at the right of each cpu's power design and a sys_fan located next to the socket 0's power plug. The other three system fans are located upper the LSI SAS Controller on the right side of the motherboard.
Looking at the external connectors directly at the back-panel, Gigabyte equipped their worksation motherboard with four USB2.0 ports, no less than three Ethernet LAN ports, a COM connector and of course the video out (VGA) for the ASPEED integrated graphic chip AST2300. The third LAN port is a management port.
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BIOS
Here are the BIOS Settings we used for the testing. The only changes we made from those settings pictured are enable/disable Turbo and HyperThreading.
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Test setup
Hardware |
|
| Motherboard |
|
| Processor | Turbo: 3'800 MHz (1 Core) 3'600 MHz (2-3 Core) 3'400 MHz (4-5 Core) 3'300 MHz (6+ Core) Turbo: 3'100 MHz (1-2 Core) 3'000 MHz (3-4 Core) 2'900 MHz (5-6 Core) 2'800 MHz (7+ Core) |
| Memory | 8 x 4 GB G.Skill RipJawsZ F3-19200CL9Q
@ 1'333 MHz CL9-9-9-24 |
| Graphic card | ASUS Radeon HD 7970 Direct CU II |
| Driver | Catalyst 12.4 |
| Hard disk | OCZ RevoDrive 3 |
| Power supply | Seasonic Platinum SS-1000XP |
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WPrime 1024
wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions. The less time it takes the faster is your processor.
UCBench 2011
UnRAR-crack is a free RAR password cracker. It employs various techniques to maximize cracking speed (e.g. using SSE2, SSSE3, etc. to test more passwords at once, and using multithreading to take advantage of multi-core/hyperthreaded processors).UnRAR-crack benchmark uses the password cracking core of UnRAR-crack to test the performance of your system. It works by launching several thousand password checks and measuring the average testing speed, in passwords per second. It repeats the same procedure for different number of threads (up to the max your system can utilize), and using different crypto functions (SSE2-optimized, SSSE3-optimized, etc.). Using it, you can measure the SMP boost, the SSE unit performance, etc. The higher is the number the faster is your processor.
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CineBench
The test scenario uses all of your system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral "No Keyframes" animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores. In fact, CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.
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SiSoftware Sandra - Memory Bandwidth
Measures the streaming performance of the memory systems. Higher is faster.
SiSoftware Sandra - Memory Latency
Measures the access time of the cache and memory systems. Lower is faster.
SiSoftware Sandra - Cache Bandwidth
Measures the performance of the
cache and memory systems. Higher is faster.
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SiSoftware Sandra - Cryptography
Measures the cryptographic performance (encrypt/decrypt, hash, sign) of the processors. Higher is faster.
SiSoftware Sandra - Processor Arithmetic
Measures the arithmetic and floating-point performance of processors. Higher is faster.
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SiSoftware Sandra - Processor Multi-Media
Measures the multi-media and media processing performance of processors. Higher is faster.
SiSoftware Sandra - Mutli-Core Efficiency
Measures the efficiency of inter-core, inter-module and inter-package communication of processors. Higher is faster.
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Office Productivity
The Office Productivity scenario models productivity usage including word processing, spreadsheet data manipulation, email creation/management and web browsing.SYSmark 2012 measures system performance by measuring the response time of tasks on a PC using real applications and simulated user input. In the SYSmark 2012 scoring methodology, task response times are used to generate a performance rating that reflects the user experience. The faster a PC responds to the application workloads in SYSmark 2012, the higher its SYSmark 2012 performance ratings will be.
Read, create and search for emails. Create and execute a rule on email inbox. Use multiple browsers to browse a blog, online shopping site, wiki site and social networking site. Check web mail in a private browser session. Combine multiple scanned pages from a complex document into an encrypted PDF document using optical character recognition (OCR). Create a PDF with fillable form fields from scanned pages. Archive a diverse set of files into an a single encrypted file. Use an advanced OCR program to convert scanned pages of complex and simple documents into editable word documents. Create a blog post and do a mail merge. Use a spreadsheet program to do data analysis. Create and view complex presentations that include clip art and video. Some of these activities are performed concurrently to model typical multitasking behavior.
| Application | Version | Document Type |
| ABBYY Finereader | Pro 10.0 | Image files, word processing documents |
| Adobe Acrobat | Pro 9 | Portable document files, image files |
| Adobe Flash player | 10.1 | Flash animations |
| Microsoft Excel | 2010 | Spreadsheets |
| Microsoft Internet Explorer | 9 | Web pages |
| Microsoft Outlook | 2010 | E-mails |
| Microsoft Power Point | 2010 | Presentation files, image files, video files |
| Microsoft Word | 2010 | Word processing documents |
| Mozilla Firefox | 3.6.8 | Web pages |
| WinZip | Pro 14.5 | Zip files, assorted document files |
Data / Financial Analysis
The Data/Financial Analysis scenario creates financial models to review, evaluate and forecast business expenses. In addition, the performance and viability of financial investments is analyzed using past and projected performance data.SYSmark 2012 measures system performance by measuring the response time of tasks on a PC using real applications and simulated user input. In the SYSmark 2012 scoring methodology, task response times are used to generate a performance rating that reflects the user experience. The faster a PC responds to the application workloads in SYSmark 2012, the higher its SYSmark 2012 performance ratings will be.
Generate sales forecasts by region and currency based on historical data, and produce summary graphs and pivot tables using a spreadsheet application.
| Application | Version | Document Type |
| Microsoft Excel | 2010 | Spreadsheets |
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System Management
The System Management scenario models the creation of data backup sets and the compression, and decompression of various file types. Updates to installed software are also performed.SYSmark 2012 measures system performance by measuring the response time of tasks on a PC using real applications and simulated user input. In the SYSmark 2012 scoring methodology, task response times are used to generate a performance rating that reflects the user experience. The faster a PC responds to the application workloads in SYSmark 2012, the higher its SYSmark 2012 performance ratings will be.
Install and then upgrade an application using a complete application installer and patch installers. Perform a (simulated) full system backup using encryption, then after making changes to the initial backup dataset, perform two encrypted incremental backups. Restore both backups. Create an encrypted archive of various sensitive files for transfer across unsecured communications, and another unencrypted archive of various files. Decompress the initial backup and two incremental backups. Decompress the encrypted and unencrypted archive files.
| Application | Version | Document Type |
| Mozilla Firefox | Installers fir versions 2.0.0.20, 3.6.2, 3.6.3, 3.6.4, 3.6.6, 3.6.7 | Application installer |
| WinZip | Pro 14.5 | Zip files, assorted media and document files |
| Winzip Command Line | 3.2 | Zip files, assorted media and document files |
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MediaCreation
The Media Creation scenario models using digital photos and digital video to create, preview, and render a video advertisement for a fictional business.SYSmark 2012 measures system performance by measuring the response time of tasks on a PC using real applications and simulated user input. In the SYSmark 2012 scoring methodology, task response times are used to generate a performance rating that reflects the user experience. The faster a PC responds to the application workloads in SYSmark 2012, the higher its SYSmark 2012 performance ratings will be.
Create a panoramic image using an image editing application, combine a set of photos into one high dynamic range (HDR) image, and adjust and prepare both images for print. Preview and encode a complex video project using a video compositing application. Here, OpenGL is used for all video previews and a software render is used for maximum video quality upon final output as recommended by software vendor documentation. Transcode the video to a format suitable for web publishing using a video editing application.
| Application | Version | Document Type |
| Adobe After Effects | CS5 | Video files, image files, audio files |
| Adobe Photoshop | CS5 Extended | Image files |
| Adobe Première | Pro CS5 | Video files |
3DModeling
The 3D Modeling scenario focuses on creating, rendering, and previewing 3D objects and/or environments suitable for use in still imagery. The creation of 3D architectural models/landscapes and rendering of 2D images and video of models are also included.SYSmark 2012 measures system performance by measuring the response time of tasks on a PC using real applications and simulated user input. In the SYSmark 2012 scoring methodology, task response times are used to generate a performance rating that reflects the user experience. The faster a PC responds to the application workloads in SYSmark 2012, the higher its SYSmark 2012 performance ratings will be.
Createcomponents for a 3D scene, including a panoramic image and texture images, using an image editing application. Create and render views of an architectural model using realistic materials in an architectural modeling application. Add visual features to an existing architectural model, and render "sketch" style views using an architectural modeling application. Create a 3D scene, rendering views and a fly-through animation of the scene's progression through development, using a 3D modeling application.
| Application | Version | Document Type |
| Adobe Photoshop | CS5 Extended | Image files |
| Autodesk 3ds Max | 2011 | CAD files, image files, video files |
| Autodesk AutoCAD | 2011 | CAD files |
| Google SketchUp | Pro 8 | CAD files, image files |
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Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| At a first glance we were surprised that the Gigabyte GA-7PESLX is very similar to the GA-7PESH1 when you look at it from a layout point of view. Of course the socket is not the same (LGA1356 vs LGA2011), the memory architecture as well (Triple channel vs Quad Channel) and also the PCB colour (most important ;) ) went from ultra fast blue to green. It was also possible to install large CPU coolers, which would be usful if you want to build a high-end workstation that operates at low noise level. Another nice addition is the LSI RAID Controller which is capable of managing up to eight drives. Therefore it is also worth mentioning that the RAID Controller has been connected via eight lanes. In other words, there is plenty of bandwidth. | -
Design - LSI RAID Controller |
||
| Layout | + | - | |
| Looking at the DIMM slots showed that they have been placed very close to the CPU sockets. Like this Gigabyte has been able to save some space which they needed because of the expansion slots. In fact there is a good mix. What you get is two PCI Express x16 Gen3 slots, two PCI Express x8 working at only x4 (one is Gen3 the other is Gen2) slots as well as another PCI Express x4 Gen2 slot. If you for example want to install a high performance PCI Express SSD then you'll be happy about the PCI Express x8 Gen3 Slots. We also have to mention that Gigabyte put the main PCIe 16x quite close to the last DIMM slot. Never the less this causes no issues since we managed to install a high end graphics card equipped with a backplate and it didn't collide with the memory modules. | -
Location of DIMM
Slots
- Expansion Slots
- PCI Express Gen3 - LSI SAS 2008 |
||
| Performance | + | - | |
| The performance when using synthetic and theorical benchmarks is just impressive. Performance is really up to twice as high when using two instead of only one processor. But sadly you won't see the same for real world workloads. Simply because todays software isn't ready for that many threads. Of course you will see benefits with such a machine if you require heavy computing workload or a virtual machine. We also noticed a huge performance drop regarding the memory and cache bandwidth when enabling the HyperThreading technology. Talking about the performance of the Xeon E5-2470 versus the Xeon E5-2690, one can see that on average under both synthetic benchmarks and real world workloads the Xeon E5-2470 is about 15 to 20 % slower. | - Synthetic Benchmarks | - Memory and Cache Bandwidth when HyperThreading is enabled. | |
| BIOS | + | - | |
| The BIOS is of course well furnished for a server use. But only in this case. As we said already this motherboard is not designed for the enthusiast market so that's normal. But anyway we would have liked to have a BIOS with more configuration settings for clock frequency and memory timings for exemple. | - Lots of WorkSation/server settings | - Free of enthusiasts settings | |
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| This motherboard has been designed for professional use. We see several cenarios where this board makes a lot of sense, where one of which is virtualisation. Thanks to the onboard SLI SAS controller you can also assemble an IOPS monster based on up to eight fast SSDs. Furthermore you could also build a powerful workstation for video or audio editing. | -
Worksation - Server - Running several virtual machines |
- Overclocking - Gaming - Desktop |
|
| Rating | |||
| We give the Gigabyte GA-7PESLX four out of five stars. | |||
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Author: c.ney@ocaholic.ch Copy edited and translated: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch c.ney@ocaholic.ch