Asus P6T7 WS Motherboard Boosts With 7 PCI-E Slots
We’re impressed with Asus P6T7 WS SuperComputer motherboard with 7 PCI-E slots at CeBIT held in March, and this X58-powered motherboard has shown up at Asus’ website.
This model is built on two NVIDIA nForce 200 chips and compatible with Intel Core i7 & Xeon processor. With six DDR3 memory slots supporting up to 24GB of RAM, the seven PCI-E x16 slots enables it to support SLI and CrossFire.
P6T7 WS SuperComputer features 16+2 phase power design, and packs two eSATA, two SAS and six SATA ports.
P6T7 isn’t on sale yet, but we may expect it soon.
May 5th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Crikey.
May 5th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
More slots that have no use! YAY!
May 6th, 2009 at 6:26 am
@ jason, “WS” means workstation, i.e. it’s not meant for gaming on, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it anyway. Furthermore, it’s not like graphics cards are the only PCIe cards available, or that those this board is meant for (i.e. professionals) don’t use SLI/CF or have multi-monitor setups. Plus it’s not an ATX board, it follows th eslightly different CEB server form factor. Try thinking outside the board, so to speak.
@ author, which Xeon? Don’t say it in general as if they’re all the same. Like Core i7, Xeon W3500′s are also Bloomfields; if they work in X58 systems, that’s the reason why. What about the Xeon 5500′s, the Gainstowns meant for 2-way but use the same pin-out? The only boards I’ve seen that have official support for both (i.e. tested) were those by Supermicro. Asus’ site shows W3500 support, but not all 5500′s have been tested, looks like only the dual-core versions are supported.
Granted, whether the article was accurate or not, it would still be the customers responsibility if they went out and got this board with any 1366 CPU assuming it would work on default based solely on this article. But also a fair chunk of readers here are predominatly gamers/enthusiasts who wouldn’t know any better and have nothing more than a passing interest in things outside what they do, if at all.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:57 am
Edit: E5502 is the only dual-core, E5504 and 5506 are quads. These CPUs don’t have Turbo or SMT.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:20 am
Could you make an example of how an average workstation user would utilize those slots? And would it be the same for him if they were just pci?
May 8th, 2009 at 6:12 am
I actually had a 7-slot PCI board once, but it was a regular desktop system and only filled up half the slots with a 4MB video card, sound card, and a 14.4kbps modem. Never filled the slots but it was nice to have the extra room, well, until AGP came.
As for a 7-slot PCIe, first option would be a multi-GPU setup, second could be multi-monitor, upto 14 of them. Next there could be combinations of PCIe-based RAID cards with hardware controlers not already on the mainboard; for more drives, performance and redundancy.
Next a sense of future-proofing: For one these new and expensive PCIe SSD’s take up way less space than having a RAID card with the hard drive space and wire management issues, which the latter affects system cooling. For another, both USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps specs are coming to retail by about next year. Both will be able to push up to 600MB/s per connection, that’s more than even a PCIe 2.0 x1 slot; add in there will be more than one connection in the add-on card, you will need at least an x4 slot for them, maybe even x8.
While by the end of next year into 2011, PCIe 3.0 will be rolling it, and since even PCIe 2.0 cards still work in 1.1 spec slots, there’s a lot of life left on this board.
But then like I said, while the prouct may have a target audience, anyone can use it. I can see 3-way SLi + physics + a tv tuner + a sound card + PCIe RAID — they may not utilize all x16 or x8 lanes per slot, that doesn’t mean you can’t use it. This ficticious setup may require single-slot waterblocks on the 3-way SLi + physics though, to make it fit, but it’s possible.
May 8th, 2009 at 8:09 am
They could use them for raid cards
May 8th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Quadro/Tesla-type workstation graphics and GPGPU cards, RAID cards, 10Gb Ethernet, next year we’ll have USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s both of which will need more than an X1 lane for full speed.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
will this be a compatible motherboard for an hd7 pro tools rig?.. its a 7 card dsp set-up.. the pro tools hd 7 case and motherboard cost over $2000 or $3000.. this is going to be a great alternative for that.. if this would be compatible..