SUPERMICRO X8DA3

Introduction

Each time Intel comes out with a new Xeon, they never fail to produce remarkable benchmarks.  What makes this particular review so exciting is that we have a pair of the top-of-the-line Nehalem i7 Xeons, humming at 3.2GHz, yes the W5580s!  Our very first test motherboard will be the Supermicro X8DA3.  These guys always produce solid boards and are possibly the #1 server motherboard maker outside of OEMs such as HP, Intel, and Dell.  Besides, Supermicro have always spec'd their products more to the likings of us super-workstation users, not just server and data center use. 

So let's begin by looking at the heart of the X8DA3, its chipset - the 5520 Tylersburg-36D:

As we can see here, the 5520 supports 36 PCIe lanes, CL and ESI to the ICH southbridge.  As with other i7 CPUs, these Xeons feature QPI to the 5520, and to each physical processor, as well as the triple-channel DDR3 memory.