GIGABYTE Server GA-7PESH3 Motherboard Review
by Ian Cutress on September 4, 2014 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Gigabyte
- Xeon
- Workstation
- Enterprise
- C602
GIGABYTE GA-7PESH3 Conclusion
If we take the PC industry as a whole, and strip out the server and low end markets, the system-under-the-desk market is that mix of medium volume with medium pricing (vs. 100 million tablets or $1m racks). Of what is left, very few need a Xeon system and even fewer of that margin needs to use a dual processor arrangement. This is the realm of the 2P workstation, which GIGABYTE is trying to harness with the GA-7PESH3.
We are actually reviewing the GA-7PESH3 relatively late in its product cycle. We reported on the initial release back in January 2013, as the evolutionary successor to the GA-7PESH1 (which we reviewed here, also in 01/2013) intended for Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge-E Xeons. Workstation users are not often ones to upgrade at the immediate release of a new architecture unless the cost can be justified, so the relevance of the GA-7PESH3 is still important when the professional level of Haswell-E is around the corner.
For these 2P workstations, only Xeons will do. This also means the cost of the workstation shifts primarily towards CPUs, DRAM and add-in cards making the motherboard cost a rather small factor in the build. The GIGABYTE Server business unit typically sells to OEMs designing systems, but in selling to the public via retailers like Newegg, they come under increased scrutiny: users building their own workstations (or IT professionals building them for the company) will want to get the best of everything, no matter what the cost.
The GA-7PESH3 is designed to form the basis of a compute machine, rather than a virtualization workstation. The one-DIMM per channel memory arrangement, due to the size of the motherboard, limits users who need memory intensive virtual machines but might form the basis of a VM workstation for a small office for users who need lighter applications. This is also supported by the extended PCIe support across all seven full-length PCIe lanes, suggesting that seven single-slot GPUs, FPGAs, PCIe storage or RAID cards can be used. This can allow for a few VM users per card or one super user who needs specialist support. The only other issue that arises here is that the motherboard has no extra power connectors for the PCIe slots, suggesting that if all the slots needed to draw the 75W as specified by the PCIe 3.0 standard, then 525W through the 24-pin ATX connector will start to cause issues. On the consumer motherboard side, we take issue when a 4-way SLI motherboard does not have an extra power connector, and this an obvious flaw.
Aside from the RAID card potential, the motherboard gives SAS and SAS a fair share of the board space, giving 8 and 6 ports respectively. Extra onboard Type-A USB 3.0 ports are present for software license dongles, with a USB 3.0 header to be used in conjunction with the 3.5-inch USB front-panel bracket included. Audio is via a Realtek ALC892 codec, and dual Intel 82574L GbE NICs provide connectivity. Like other boards in this segment, management is provided by an Aspeed IC via a network port, in this case running MergePoint software.
In general, workstation and server type motherboards tend to do badly in our tests. DPC Latency, audio results, power consumption, POST time and USB speed all fall below a standard consumer level product, with the BIOS and software packages limited. This seems a bit strange if you are coming from the consumer world, but motherboards like the GA-7PESH3 are built to do a job: provide support for dual Xeons, ECC/RDIMM memory, plenty of add-in cards, run 24/7 and a long-term warranty. End-user customers will get a 3-years warranty, while business users will have to discuss with GIGABYTE their long term needs.
GIGABYTE is improving the ecosystem around its Server range in recent quarters, with compatible Chenbro chassis as well as add-in cards for various networking (10 GbE) or storage (RAID/SAS) functions. However GIGABYTE’s main competition will be that $640 ends up quite expensive for a consumer purchase. Other competitors orient the CPU sockets for server use with restricted rear panel connectors and no audio, albeit with similar PCIe slot counts and at half the price. That might be a bit too much of a hurdle to overcome for the 7PESH3, but after looking at Newegg’s list of 2P LGA2011-0 motherboards as well as our testing, the GA-7PESH3’s main selling point will be the seven full length PCIe slots in a workstation form factor that also offers a proper rear panel IO and support for DDR3-1866 memory.
GIGABYTE's server division has told us that they are updating their line for Grantley (Haswell-E Xeons) sometime soon, however the 7PESH3 will remain on the market due to the extended lifecycle of the platform. Should there be a favorable price difference to move Ivy Bridge-E Xeon stock ahead of the Grantley release, motherboards like this come into play as a compute bound user might plan an upgrade if they still rely on a dual 1366 system.
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ShieTar - Friday, September 5, 2014 - link
Well, there is a tiny group of people who will be interested: They need a Workstation because they independently work with their PC to create content, but if possible they would also like to use the existing setup to game occasionally, instead of spend another 1k$ and put another Case next to their desk.Also, 10 years ago a lot of Trolls were posting "Yeah but can it run Quake" in the comment section of server hardware reviews. This kind of testing shuts them up.
xxsk8er101xx - Saturday, September 6, 2014 - link
Because the motherboard is designed for the prosumer market. Not the professional/server market. The point of the article is to basically say that this motherboard servers no purpose. It can't be used for the professional/server market because there are too few RAM slots and no mini-sas slots which the majority of the professional market has a need for.Kevin G - Sunday, September 7, 2014 - link
I think this motherboard has priced itself out of the prosumer market a bit at $650 USD and then you have Xeon prices on top of that. I do see this system being a decent pick for some professional tasks though. RAM capacity is still pretty decent as this board accepts 32 GB DIMMs for 256 GB capacity. That's a bit expensive due to 32 GB DIMM pricing but I see 128 GB via 16 GB DIMMs as reasonably priced for what you get. Needing more than 128 GB is a very small niche and one that overlaps widely with the idea of just using servers to batch process the large data sets anyway.The PCIe setup does scream professional though. Components like capture cards and PCIe SSDs are not going to be restricted in performance. (Though it is worrisome that this board doesn't have a dedicated aux power for just the PCIe slots.) The presence of onboard audio also indicates that this certainly isn't a server board.
I have yet to encounter a good reason for SAS in the professional space. 6 Gbit SATA provides enough bandwidth and SSD's can saturate that. SATA hard drives are adequate for bulk storage locally. (There is definitely a niche for SAS in server space with multi path IO for redundancy.) I can see a need for RAID5/6 in the prosumer and professional space but SAS isn't a requirement for it (though incidentally most RAID5/6 cards are SAS based). Even then, in most cases software RAID1 is 'good enough' for redundancy to prevent downtime in the professional space.
AnnihilatorX - Sunday, September 7, 2014 - link
Kindly read the article!: "While gaming is not a focus of motherboards like the GIGABYTE GA-7PESH3, the system may be in use by content developers relying on an accurate representation with what they are making. "gchernis - Thursday, September 4, 2014 - link
Nice write-up! Do you have any data on total CPU utilization with multithreaded tasks? What about kernel-time vs. user mode time split?JellyRoll - Thursday, September 4, 2014 - link
"Server motherboards historically have done rather poor in this test,"....perhaps because it is a server motherboard? are you testing a server workload on it?Samus - Thursday, September 4, 2014 - link
Anand used to do SQL benchmarks. This is what we need for this review to be complete.mavere - Thursday, September 4, 2014 - link
The Handbrake results are a bit disappointing because data-dependency breakpoints occur both naturally (at scene boundaries) and manually (at regular ~10s key-frame intervals). Conceptually, the transcoder can easily reuse the source's chapter-timing metadata and keyframes to outsource chunks of work to each socket with minimal communication overhead.I'm guessing that NUMA performance was never a pressing concern for any of Handbrake's and x264's contributors.
JDG1980 - Thursday, September 4, 2014 - link
I just can't see a good reason to buy into Ivy Bridge at this time, when Haswell-EP is just around the corner. Personally, I'm seriously considering the E5-1650 v3, assuming it comes in at a similar price point to its predecessor (and assuming that there are some decent workstation boards with ECC support available).And it's especially hard for AnandTech to justify the time reviewing this soon-to-be-obsolescent board when they still haven't gotten around to Tonga. I know it's not the most groundbreaking new GPU design (and AMD picked about the worst place in their lineup they possibly could to slot it), but still, it's a new GPU and we haven't seen a review despite every other major site doing so 2 days ago. What's going on with this?
ruthan - Thursday, September 4, 2014 - link
I would buy such machine for gaming if there would be performance benefit, so its good to know and mainstream everytime rules.. Its like SPARC or Power architecture, they cant compete because of mainstream x86 market is huge so, research revenue there are also huge, users requirements are bigger, more universal. This Sparc, Ithanium or Power market exist only because of stupid company policies, like everything from one company, support only for this HW, lies about super duper optimalisation for such HW, and especially license per CPU socket (here realy doesnt matter about price of CPU because, SW licence per socket is astronomical, so you are forced to buy Sparc or Power machine..).