Three Dual Xeon motherboards by Gigabyte, Intel and MSI

Introduction

Recently we covered the new Intel Xeon "Clovertown" processor in a detailed review, which is the first quad-core chip for use in servers and workstations. In the meantime, many large server-building companies have started offering off-the-shelf systems based on this new server chip. However, building your own server can be another option: not only do you have more freedom in choosing the components that are used, but you often end up spending less. For those who'd like to build a server based on two Xeon Woodcrest or two Xeon Clovertown processors, we'd like to introduce three suitable motherboards: the Gigabyte GA-7BESH-RH, the Intel S5000VSaSAS and the MSI 5000P Master-S8M.

The three motherboards we're about to discuss are all based on the Intel 5000 chipset which is designed for Xeon processors from the Dempsey, Woodcrest and Clovertown ranges. The most important property of this chipset is the implementation of two separate frontside buses for either processor. When you use Xeons with a 1333 MHz FSB this means that there is a maximum bandwidth between the chipset and the processors of no less than 21 GByte/s. The chipset is paired with fully buffered DDR2-667/533 memory, the so-called FB-DIMM modules. In this field there are some differences between the two editions of the Intel 5000 chipset: the cheaper 5000V uses two memory channels, whereas the 5000P has four. This means the maximum bandwidth for the memory is 21 GB/s. The chipset also offers PCI-Express support and can be combined with an extra bridge chip that allows for the usage of 64-bit PCI-X slots. The matching ESB2 southbridge adds 8x USB 2.0 and 6x SATA 300, among other features.

The three motherboards we covered all employ the Extended ATX format and are suitable for tower as well as rack cases. For the latter option, you do need a case that has a minimum height of 2 U: for use in a 1U case the memory slots would have to be placed at an angle. This shouldn't necessarily be a drawback, seeing as it's not common for users to hand build 1U servers.

Two of the three motherboards have an onboard SAS controller, and this is an option on the third one. SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) is the successor of the long-running SCSI technology and uses serial data transmission just like Serial ATA. SAS has been gaining popularity in the server world in the past few years, and nowadays we are faced with a wide range of SAS hard disks, some even in the 15k rpm range.