Performance, Price and Thoughts
Performance
Performance of the Tumwater-based Xeon system is something I've not covered at all until now, over the course of my four SLI articles. Performance with the consumer 6800 and 6600-based range of SLI configurations is some way short of nForce4 SLI, due in part to Tumwater's PCI Express host configuration, and also the relative performance of the 3.4 Xeon CPUs compared to the FX-55 in the nForce4 system. None of the titles tested for the nForce4 articles are multi-threaded, leaving a Xeon processor redundant and a 3.4GHz Netburst-based processor, especially one similar to the desktop Prescott core, is never going to match an FX-55 for gaming performance. Registered DDR2-400 isn't the last word in memory subsystem ability either.It turns out that the Blue Cobra is more suited to Quadro SLI, in 'professional' workstation applications that can make use of a second processor and the differing performance characteristics of a Quadro graphics implementation, compared to the consumer GeForce range. Quadro SLI simply wasn't available during the testing period and it's quite obvious that for consumer gaming applications, Athlon FX or Athlon 64 is clearly the choice to make.
So while the Tumwater-based system is slower in raw terms, compared to nForce4 SLI, nForce4 SLI has no provision for a second CPU. That comes with nForce4 PRO, an unannounced product that partners two CK8-04 bridges with a pair of Opterons, to satisfy that part of the market.
White or Blue will therefore be an easy choice to make, depending on what you want to do with your SLI system. I'll be examining Quadro SLI in coming weeks, hopefully before 2005 but most likely early into the new year, so keep an eye out for that.
Price
The price for the Blue Cobra Xeon system at the time of writing, as reviewed with 6800 GTs, is £3700. That's without speakers, monitor, keyboard or mouse or any software apart from the operating system. The paint job can be removed, saving you £175, and it turns out that Scan are now offering the white paint on the Xeon systems too, which they didn't appear to before at the time the initial draft of this article was created.Expensive stuff. The nForce4 SLI system should come in at under £3000 in a similar state without a monitor or extras, but don't expect to be too much under that mark. However, with Scan's 1 year warranty on everything and the performance on offer, these boutique PCs are comparable in price to similar non-SLI offerings from other vendors such as SavRow, Armari and VoodooPC.
You're spending a lot of money on pre-assembled SLI right now, there's no getting away from it. Lead time on the current Xeon configuration is 1 to 2 weeks if you want 6800 GTs, sometime in early 2005 if you want Ultras (for an extra £650 !).
Thoughts
Pretty, pretty expensive and pretty desirable, new technology always comes at a pretty premium. Scan's 3XS systems were the perfect foil for my SLI testing, Scan having done all the hard work in conjunction with NVIDIA (we would also like to thank Adam Foat for his hard work during all of SLi testing), to get the systems up and running. A big thanks to our very own Paul Dutton for some integration work on the nForce4 SLI version of the hardware, and also Armari for their continued support, since even though they couldn't quite get me a system in time for final testing, they were still on hand to lend us some 6600 GTs (the XFX boards seen in the 6600 GT article) and technical support for the ASUS mainboard that they'd been evaluating for a few days prior.We've seen impressive 3XS hardware from Scan in the past and their Cobra SLI systems don't buck that trend. Incredibly well built, paint jobs to put others to shame and potentially umatched performance round off maybe the most impressive systems I've had the pleasure of working with to date. If you're looking for high-end SLI right now, I can recommend you put an enquiry or two their way, for the configuration you're looking for.
I'll leave you with a repeat picture of the lovely Blue Cobra to finish with. We took it to Intel's Bloodline CPL event and the gamers there certainly had a dribble.
Click for a larger version
