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One of the most popular motherboard reviews on STH of the Xeon 3400 series generation was the Supermicro X8SIL-F. It was a micro ATX (mATX) motherboard with some of the mainstay server board features such as dual Intel 82574L Gigabit NICs and IPMI 2.0. Looking forward to this generation, Supermicro has a spiritual successor in the X9SCM-F which has been a popular board. Tyan has responded to the X9SCM-F with a similar board, the S5510 series S5510GM3NR, that has one key advantage, three Intel 82574L NICs. Read the full story

Although the Intel Xeon L5640 is a lot of processor with very low power consumption requirements, the Intel Xeon X5670 is a much higher-end part. Although quad socket capable, the X5670 is also dual socket capable and fills a position that the Xeon E series does not scale to at this time. The L5640 was fast, but let’s see how adding another 533MHz to twelve physical, twenty-four logical cores fares in terms of performance. At a base clock of 2.93GHz and a turbo clock of 3.33GHz using a 6.4GT/s QPI alongside a higher 95w TDP, one can imagine that performance is going to be stellar. Read the full story

The Intel Xeon E3-1270 is essentially the same as Intel’s Core i7-2600 series CPU with the omission of integrated GPU capabilities, which cuts 15w from the chip’s TDP and adds support for unbuffered ECC DIMMs. Intel also offers the Xeon E3-1275, which includes the integrated GPU and consequently adds 15w to the TDP of the part. Recently ServeTheHome has looked at virtually all of the no-GPU Xeon E3 including the Xeon E3-1220, Xeon E3-1230, Xeon E3-1240 and Xeon E3-1280. Like the other Xeon E3-1200 CPUs, the E3-1270 has an 80w TDP, AES-NI, ECC support, VT-x and VT-d support and a host of other desirable features for the server market.

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Major news this week including the Intel Xeon E3-1200 series and Bromolow platform launch, Microsoft releasing a free iSCSI target for Windows Server 2008 R2  and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2, Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, and Windows Home Server 2011 moving to RTM status and being released to OEMs, TechNet and MSDN subscribers. Read the full story

The Intel Xeon E3-1240 is the second step up in the Sandy Bridge Xeon E3 series when looking at processors that include Hyper-Threading. As the Xeon E3-1220 (no HT), Xeon E3-1230 and Xeon E3-1280 have been reviewed previously, this review will be mostly performance based. For more information on the Sandy Bridge Xeon E3 series and Bromolow platform including C202, C204, and C206 chipsets see the introductory article. Read the full story

Today Intel is launching the Xeon E3 series CPU line as part of the Bromolow platform alongside the C202, C204 and C206 chipsets. This is a much anticipated release where Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture moves to dominate the UP market for the near future. When Intel delayed the Bromolow platform launch due to the Cougar Point flaw, users were left wondering when the next generation UP Xeons would arrive. About a month and a half behind schedule, the Xeon E3 is here, and is the new UP market leader. Read the full story

Today it is time to look at a twelve core, twenty-four thread powerhouse of a system. After looking at the low-cost Westmere-EP based dual Intel Xeon E5606 configuration and finding it to be a power sipping dual-CPU setup, I noted that the E5606 is essentially a six core die with two cores that likely did not pass Intel internal testing and were therefore disabled. Intel also produces another low-power option, this time with the full six cores enabled, with Turbo Boost and Hyper Threading. With a street price close to $1,000, the Xeon L5640 is in a different league compared to the Xeon E5606 (approximately $240 at the time of this writing), but it offers a 60w TDP and many more cores. Given the price tag and speed of these CPUs, I plan on only testing a dual-Xeon L5640 configuration. Read the full story

As part of its Q1’11 CPU roll-out, Sandy Bridge was perhaps Intel’s biggest announcement. Intel also released the E5603, E5606, and E5607 CPUs which are quad core, non-Hyper-Threading parts meant for dual processor (DP) servers. I decided to look at the E5606 CPU as a successor to the E5506 previous generation (45nm) CPU and was very surprised with the results. Read the full story

Up for benchmarking today is the Intel Xeon E3-1280 Sandy Bridge based Xeon processor. Interestingly enough, this is the highest stock clocked Sandy Bridge CPU available today. After looking at both the Xeon E3-1220 and Xeon E3-1230 recently I decided to purchase a Xeon E3-1280, the fastest Sandy Bridge CPU (Xeon or otherwise) available to date, just out of curiosity. My hypothesis, largely supported by numbers, was that the E3-1280 would perform similarly but better to the E3-1230 and Core i7-2600K at stock speeds. Read the full story

On tap for today is benchmarking the Xeon W3550 LGA 1366 UP server CPU. Recently I have been looking at the new Sandy Bridge Xeon E3-1220 and Xeon E3-1230 CPUs. Most comparisons have come in the form of the new Sandy Bridge Xeons to the Lynnfield based Xeon X3440 and Xeon X3460 CPUs. I have received numerous comments requesting a low-cost LGA 1366 alternative to be reviewed as an alternative or baseline. I chose the W3550 for two reasons. First, I use one in the Big WHS so I had it available. Second, price wise it is in the same price range as the Sandy Bridge Xeons. Read the full story