I'm about to buy a Xeon W3680 CPU. Only need a single-physical-CPU
system.

Three years ago I made the mistake of buying a Xeon 5160 and mating it
to a Gigabyte
GA-7VCSV-RH board that had nothing more than a 1x PCIe slot for
video. Just try FINDING
such a card. Anyway ...

What is the best board I can buy for modest (but with aspirations)
video needs (3D a plus)
and expansion with 16x PCIe slots or whatever's more modern.
Also I want to be able to fit this into my ATX case which is this
massive Startech:
http://us.startech.com/product/ATXFULL635V-

.... even if the board is a CEB rather than ATX.

What's your recommendation for the perfect board for the W3680?
I plan to dual-boot RHEL5 and Windows 7 64-bit edition. Will be
compiling C programs on the
Linux side while doing more multimedia-based stuff and editing on the
Windows 7 side.

The Derfer wrote:
> I'm about to buy a Xeon W3680 CPU. Only need a single-physical-CPU
> system.
>
> Three years ago I made the mistake of buying a Xeon 5160 and mating it
> to a Gigabyte
> GA-7VCSV-RH board that had nothing more than a 1x PCIe slot for
> video. Just try FINDING
> such a card. Anyway ...
>
> What is the best board I can buy for modest (but with aspirations)
> video needs (3D a plus)
> and expansion with 16x PCIe slots or whatever's more modern.
> Also I want to be able to fit this into my ATX case which is this
> massive Startech:
> http://us.startech.com/product/ATXFULL635V-
>
> ... even if the board is a CEB rather than ATX.
>
> What's your recommendation for the perfect board for the W3680?
> I plan to dual-boot RHEL5 and Windows 7 64-bit edition. Will be
> compiling C programs on the
> Linux side while doing more multimedia-based stuff and editing on the
> Windows 7 side.
>

For chuckles, I gave this page a whirl. And plugged W3680 in.

http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusuppor...Language=en-us

P6T WS Professional ALL 0913

P6T6 WS Revolution ALL 0609

P6T7 WS SuperComputer ALL 0607

So apparently, the BIOS on those is set up to take a Xeon. But
it also implies, that motherboards with a similar chipset
will also work. (As long as the BIOS approves of it.)

You can see here, the last of those boards, is a bit of overkill. $400!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131390

It might be better to just Google "W3680 X58" and see what pops up.
That'll get you stuff like this.

http://forums.ocworkbench.com/showthread.php?t=101224

"May 11, 2010, Taipei, Taiwan – ASRock Inc., the leading motherboard
manufacturer today proudly announce its X58 Extreme3 and X58 Extreme
motherboards now support Intel’s newly launched six-core Xeon W3680
processor. Differed from desktop models, ASRock X58 Extreme3 and
X58 Extreme motherboards can now support server CPU usage and even
with ECC memory !"

Lots of people in the enthusiast community, test hardware combinations
that aren't officially sanctioned. So you may get some other ideas,
for more cost effective solutions than the above, $400 motherboard.

Paul

On Mon, 27 Dec 2010 16:11:17 -0800, The Derfer wrote:

> I'm about to buy a Xeon W3680 CPU. Only need a single-physical-CPU
> system.
>
> Three years ago I made the mistake of buying a Xeon 5160 and mating it
> to a Gigabyte
> GA-7VCSV-RH board that had nothing more than a 1x PCIe slot for video.
> Just try FINDING
> such a card. Anyway ...
>
> What is the best board I can buy for modest (but with aspirations) video
> needs (3D a plus)
> and expansion with 16x PCIe slots or whatever's more modern. Also I want
> to be able to fit this into my ATX case which is this massive Startech:
> http://us.startech.com/product/ATXFULL635V-
>
> ... even if the board is a CEB rather than ATX.
>
> What's your recommendation for the perfect board for the W3680? I plan
> to dual-boot RHEL5 and Windows 7 64-bit edition. Will be compiling C
> programs on the
> Linux side while doing more multimedia-based stuff and editing on the
> Windows 7 side.

Do you really need a Xeon if you are only want one CPU chip? In that
configuration the only real advantage is ECC memory, but that isn't really
necessary for a workstation although it's nice to have. The next
generation iCore7, the 32nm 2600, is going to be released on January 9th.
The iCore7 support 24G of DRAM using 4G DIMMs (which are finally cost
effective). The 2600 will be 3.8GHz in it's turbo boost mode, I'm pretty
sure it will overclock to 5GHz if you use a high performance cooler like a
Thermalright (my 40nm 2.66GHz iCore 7 is running at 4GHz with a
Thermalright Ultra 120 cooler). The cost of an iCore7 box will be a
fraction of the cost of a Xeon box and it will outperform it by a lot in
any CPU intensive application.

On Mon, 27 Dec 2010 16:11:17 -0800 (PST)
The Derfer <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

<snip>
>
> What's your recommendation for the perfect board for the W3680?
> I plan to dual-boot RHEL5 and Windows 7 64-bit edition. Will be
> compiling C programs on the
> Linux side while doing more multimedia-based stuff and editing on the
> Windows 7 side.
>

I've been running a couple of Gigabyte "Ultra-Durable" boards for about a
year now, 24/7 - they've been rock-steady for me, zero hassle. One is an
Intel E4300 file server, the other (this) a CoreI7 workstation. If I need
another board in the near future, I'll go with the UD stuff again.


--
Slackware 13.1, 2.6.33.4-smp, Core i7 920
RLU #272755

> Do you really need a Xeon if you are only want one CPU chip? In that
> configuration the only real advantage is ECC memory, but that isn't really
> necessary for a workstation although it's nice to have. The next
> generation iCore7, the 32nm 2600, is going to be released on January 9th.
> The iCore7 support 24G of DRAM using 4G DIMMs (which are finally cost
> effective). The 2600 will be 3.8GHz in it's turbo boost mode, I'm pretty
> sure it will overclock to 5GHz if you use a high performance cooler like a
> Thermalright (my 40nm 2.66GHz iCore 7 is running at 4GHz with a
> Thermalright Ultra 120 cooler). The cost of an iCore7 box will be a
> fraction of the cost of a Xeon box and it will outperform it by a lot in
> any CPU intensive application.

But the 2600 appears to be only marginally better than the W3680
according
to the Passmark specs.
See them at:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

On Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:30:09 -0800, The Derfer wrote:

> cpubenchmark

The 2600K is 29% of the price of the W3680.