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Gigabyte Lets You Build Your Own Workstation with New X79S Motherboards (Updated with Video)

By Kenny Yeo - on 4 Jun 2012, 8:08pm

Gigabyte Lets You Build Your Own Workstation

Anyone who’s dabbling in high-performance computing applications such as 3D animation and simulations will know that super high-end workstations cost a bomb. Gigabyte, however, is hoping to help with their new workstation-class motherboards. Featuring Intel’s enterprise-grade C606 chipset, Gigabyte’s new X79S motherboards pack a whole load of high-end features that let professionals build their dream workstation.

The Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5 WIFI in all its glory.

On display at Computex 2012 is their flagship GA-X79S-UP5 WIFI workstation, enterprise-grade motherboard. This E-ATX monster of a motherboard supports Intel LGA2011 processors, quad-channel DDR3 ECC memory of up to 64GB, up to 4-way CrossFireX or SLI, and also comes with eight SAS connectors with an additional six SATA ports (two SATA 6Gbps, quad SATA 3Gbps). Also, as its name suggests, the GA-X79S-UP5 WIFI also comes with a special expansion card that enables WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.

The Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5 -WIFI.

The LGA2011 CPU socket is flanked by four DIMM slots on each side.

Apart from the the GA-X79S-UP5 WIFI, Gigabyte also has another variant - the GA-X79S-UP5 - which comes without the WIFI and Bluetooth 4.0 expansion card. Both motherboards feature Gigabyte’s latest Ultra Durable 5 technology, which makes use of an all-new single package, single silicon MOSFET design for better efficiency and performance. That aside, the two motherboards will also feature Gigabyte's new 3D Power 3-way Digital PWM controllers (one for the CPU, two for memory - 4 DIMM slots each), 3D BIOS and Dual UEFI BIOS.

It is hoped that with these new motherboards, professionals, especially those who work on a freelance basis, will be able to build their own workstation at a fraction of what it will cost if they were to order from established workstation manufacturers such as HP and Dell. An extra piece of the puzzle that should help this become a reality is the availability of Tesla series NVIDIA graphics cards from a similar group of vendors who already stock Quadro solutions. While Quadro as we know it as a workstation qualified product with better QC and dedicated driver support for accelerating certain APIs and applications, Tesla products are geared for high performance computing (HPC) needs with more optimized hardware and silicon design in addition to Quadro's traits and access to even more exclusive software acceleration stacks that work only with Tesla products.

So what can you expect when you pair a Xeon 8-core processor, 32GB of ECC memory and a Tesla C2075 parallel processing adapter? That's what Gigabyte wanted to showcase in conjunction with their GA-X79-UP5 series that is the backbone enabler for these components. If a picture paints a thousand words, a video should deliver far more:-

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