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ASUS, SUPERMICRO
and TYAN SEABURG MOTHERBOARDS
Conclusion
The Tyan S5396 suffers from a major setback which
cannot be circumvented - no 1600MHz FSB support.
If you don't require it, then the S5396 is a
splendid system which includes nearly everything you
need for a top-notch workstation. The on-board
LSI 1068E provides 8x SAS ports with RAID
functionality, saving you from using either a PCIe
or PCI-X slot.
- On-board SAS saves
a slot
- On-board audio and
Firewire
- 1333 FSB only!!!
As for the Asus DSEB-DG,
it has an unusual yet very advantageous slot
arrangement. It replaces one of the PCI-33
with a high-bandwidth PCIe x8, perfect for current
RAID cards, and you still get to keep both PCIe x16
slots for CrossFire madness! Asus boasts this
board has higher power efficiency, but that has not
been proven. But it lacks basic workstation
needs such as audio and firewire, however includes a
low-end GPU. Those issues are only minor, and
can be easily fixed with a PCI card or a USB audio
device. But why only four USB 2.0 ports???
- Great slot
selection and arrangement
- 1600MHz FSB support
- 4x Gigabit LAN ports
- KVM over CAT5 port
- On-board VGA
- No audio - not really a bad thing because I
am picky about my sound cards (I want bitperfect!!!)
- 4x USB 2.0 ports only?
- IPMI SO-DIMM slot
- No on-board 1394
Lastly, we have the
Supermicro X7DWA-N. Just like the Asus, we are
going to award this board a REDLINE APPROVED tach as
well, although for very different reasons.
This board takes some advantages from both boards
above, then adds its own innovative touches.
- 1600MHz FSB support
- Onboard audio
- Onboard 1394
- Shared UIO / PCI-X
slot
- Lots of USB 2.0 ports
- IPMI slot
- CF IDE slot
So that's this year's
Xeon board roundup. We weren't able to get
DDR2-800 FB-DIMMs in time for this write-up, but we
will amend this article when the modules become
available. Then, we plan on building a super
workstation running Vista and XP around one of these
boards. Stay tuned!!!
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