Three Dual Xeon motherboards by Gigabyte, Intel and MSI

Gigabyte GA-7BESH-RH

The Gigabyte GA-7BESH-RH motherboard is built around the Intel 5000P chipset and therefore offers four FB-DIMM DDR2-667 memory channels. Each channel is shared between two slots, so that a maximum can be reached of 32 GB of memory when 4 GB modules are employed. The 5000P chipset has two separate 1333/1066 MHz frontside buses that are connected to the two LGA771 sockets that are suitable for Dempsey, Woodcrest and Clovertown Xeon processors.

The motherboard offers three PCI-Express x8 expansion slots and besides them another two 64-bit PCI-X and a single PCI slot. A notable feature is an Adaptec AIC-7901X SCSI (320 Mbps) controller. While SCSI is quickly losing ground to its successor, SAS, there are quite a few system builders out there that remain faithful to the trusty old SCSI, until the new serial version has clocked in enough experience. An expansion card can add an SAS controller. Another part of the motherboard is devoted to a dongle that activates the RAID functionality of this optional LSI controller. Intel's ESB2 southbridge provides six SATA ports, as well as software RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10.

Onboard graphics is a must on a server motherboard, and so Gigabyte employs ATI's ES1000 chip which is designed especially for the job. The board also has a pair of Gigabit LAN ports, both powered by an Intel GilGal chip (82563EB). Round the back, lodged between the I/O connectors we find an NMI (non-maskable interrupt) button that can be used to force a hardware interrupt. The motherboard has six connectors for fans that can then be managed and controlled by software. It's completely IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) compliant, which makes it suitable for remote monitoring of temperatures and voltage, among others. The IPMB connector to use this functionality is also found on the motherboard.

In our price comparison, we can find this motherboard for prices of around € 389 (The Netherlands). The 7BESH is a fine server motherboard by Gigabyte. The onboard SCSI controller won't be to everyone's liking, but it's ideal for those still wanting to make use of SCSI products in a new Xeon server.