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| ASUS P5W64 Wall Street Qartet Professional We Avoid Temptation | |
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(Review by MS, November 16, 2006) |
Summary
Dual Core CPUs have come and have been upped again by Quad Core processors. Multithreading and concurrent processing of threads are the latest, if possible, in combination with multi display configurations. This analytical market is where ASUS is pushing its latest creation: the P5W64 Wall Street Quartet, equipped with four full-length PCIe slots (x16 form factor) and, at least in theory capable of running four individual video cards. In the case of dual display cards, that will allow a total of eight monitors to be powered by a single system.
In most cases, a system like this will run desktop extensions with spreadsheets and charts on the different monitors but we thought this would be boring. So we set out to run two GeForce 7800GTs in SLI for gaming, complemented by a single NVidia Quadro FX1400 for concurrent CAD processing. That was really all we could squeeze into the slots without overheating and shorting out everything. Well, we tried a few other things, too...
Intel's 975 platform is certainly worth a consideration when it comes to choosing a motherboard to be paired with the Core2 platform. Whether it is the Duo, the Extreme or the Quad "Kentsfield" version is in this case an almost secondary issue. On the chipset level, the 975X Express logic is comprised of the 82975 Memory controller hub in combination with the 82801GR I/O controller hub (7) with integrated RAID functionality better known as ICH7R. The MCH and the ICH are connected through the Direct Media Interface (DMI) boasting 2 GB/sec bandwidth. From an architectural point of view, this means that the PCIe lanes have to branch off the MCH directly; otherwise they would be starved by the limited bandwidth downstream. The 975X Express chipset, or more precisely, the 82975 MCH contains two PCIe controllers, each of which is x8 lanes wide; both controllers can be combined into one 16 lane PCIe interface or else act as separate x8 channels.
We Avoid Temptation!
Featuring: ASUS P5W64 WS, Intel Core2 Quad Extreme QX6700, ASUS Extreme n7800GT, nVidia Quadro FX1400, Sapphire Radeon X800 GTO2, ATI RADEON X850 XT, OCZ PC2 7200 XTC
Interestingly, even Intel's own reference - or mainstream production - boards like the "BadAxe2" sport more than only 2 PCIe x16 slots. In the case of the latter, three PCIe x16 connectors are present. However, only the top slot is electrically an x16 slot, the secondary "x16" form factor connectors is electrically x8 and the third slots is fed from the ICH7R with 4 lanes only, meaning that instead of the 8GB/sec concurrent bandwidth, they only supply 4GB/sec or 2 GB/sec, respectively. In each direction, this means ½ of those numbers. Needless to say that for most applications, including gaming, it is absolutely inconsequential whether there is an x8 or an x16 interface. With an x4 interface, a small hit in streaming video processing may be incurred but again, it is still equivalent to an AGP x8 interface which, for all practical purposes, has provided more than enough bandwidth to the graphics cards. The electrical configuration to the x 16 slots is hardwired but arbitration of the second set of x8 lanes occurs depending on the detection of load - or device presence in the cascading sequence of slots.
Three may be the lucky charm but there is always the drive to up existing designs by another notch. That means, instead of a whimsical three PCIe x16 connectors, we should see four of those in a more flexible and scalable configuration. The restriction remains that population of these slots will eventually cause competition for lanes and, consequently, reduction in bandwidth. On the other hand, the original PCI interface also used to live quite comfortably for the longest time with a common backbone and arbitration of the devices across the resources.
This concept has been the inspiration for ASUS' new high-end motherboard, dubbed P5W64 WS Professional where the WS moniker is short for Wall Street. The board further has the nome de guerre "Wall Street Quartet" - leading into the four PCIe x16 connector configuration. So the question is what can it do? Can we run one Quadro FX card in one slot for CAD processing and simultaneously play games on a CrossFire (or hacked SLI) configuration? And the answer is …. Read on for the details
next page: => ASUS P5W64 Wall Street Quartet At One Glance =>
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