moose517
Gold Leader
EVGA should of stayed withing the E-ATX standards, it just flaws that you need another case to fit this mobo, it's not perfect because of the odd and unknown format, no socketed Bios chiips for full reliability of bios failures & bios chip replacements and lacking IPMI 2.0 support which is very recommended and highly wanted in the 2CPU world.
If it was E-ATX, like most 2CPU boards are; it would of been alot more useful and client friendly.
But now it has a format no which case has, it's kinda useless this way, unless there are cases that can really fit it without any modifications needed?
Sorry but this is something I rather evade hence of the important features it is missing ad it's odd format.
I hope EVGA will improve the ormat to E-ATX & ATX , a smaller one would be alot more interesting, like Supermicro's X8DAL3i:
*sniped*
it's ATX format, it has Tri Channel DDR3 per CPU, it has Nehalem & Westmere support, max ram support = 3x 4GB DDR3-1333 ECC Reg per CPU, it's only down side is 1x PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ 16 lanes & 1x PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ 4 lanes.
Now if EVGA can make a sucha board in that format with a NF200 chip @ 2x PCI-E 2.0 x16 with 32 lane SLI & CFX support, then they will have a great success in the 2CPU gaming world with a much smaller product that can deliver the same performance CPU wise with same OC possibilties and it will fit in any ATX case!
So no more over sized mobo's, just the good ole ATX format and no nonsense.
thing is, following pre-defined standards won't fit the 4-way SLI which they wanted, and the way that supermicro board is layed out there isn't room for the PWM that EVGA wanted. There is a big difference between that board and EVGA's. the supermicro is meant for server enviroment, this board is meant for the benching crowd, not server market at all.
aha oke I see hehe, wel if EVGA does plan to build a smaller variant of it with lesser PCI-E slots so 2 to 3 cards is possibkle I'd be interesting to follow this idea hehe. But yeah it's understandable now , though as a Supermicro H8DAE-2 user [Dual Socket-F with Opteron Shanghai CPU's] it's also good for gaes that do suppoer SMP, not many of them sadly, though I hope that this support will come around, I mainly use it for real time Simulations and that EVGA sollution should do very good in that segment hehe.
here's my mobo:
Rear side
It does have 8.1 Chanel HD Audio, and here are the slots from top to bottom :)
IPMI 2.0
Main PCI-E 2.0 x16 with 16 lanes
PCI-E 2.0 x8 with 4 lanes
PCI-E 2.0 x8 with 8 lanes
Secondary PCI-E 2.0 x16 with 16 lanes [SLI = 32 Lanes! Excellent for Quad SLI setups]
PCI-X 133Mhz
PCI-X 100Mhz
Just lovely :) This motherboard also is flashed with Bios 3.5 for Dual istanbul support, it's my main system for Real Time Flight Simulatins and it's rock stable in any type of enviroment, there are ways for overclocking via some type of code system, I have not looked in to this yet, but I will take a deeper look into that part when I get to it. it's not really needed, it has Dual Quad Core OpteronDP 2380C2 Shanghai's, these are based on PhenomII technology thus fastenough for any game out there, it wopped Flight Sim X Deluxe Edition in Dx10 with REX 1.2 heh.
The only thing I wonder about the design of the EVGA Classified PR2 aka W55 is why didn't EVGA add an IPMI 2.0 slot or make it onboard?
This would be the ideal utility and hardware monitoring system for any overclocker it does not only monitor just a few fans and voltages but it actually monitors every thing the system has active and non active as rpms, temps and health statuses of certain system parts go here an idea what IPMI 2.0 can monotor :
If it had that you could mionitor everything as you OC higher, unless EVGA ahs something like this that can be connected externally?