another awesome contest

What is EVGA doing with all this dinosaur tech you've been seeking recently?
 
 

Really?! I still have my 8800 ultra, still functioning. You are going to exclude the ultra card? The one card superior to the 8800 GTX in that generation, and you are choosing to exclude that from qualifying?  pn: 758-P2-N881-AR
 
Let's reconsider this!!!!

Dang you! My part number is 768-P2-N837-AR. One letter off.

I’ve submitted mine and haven’t heard anything yet, it’s been 48h+ but I’m hopeful I’m one of the first or missed it by....

So is anyone with an sr2 actually considering the new contest? I for one own an sr2 but I am not going to give up a machine with better performance than the current 8 core Systems, 48gb of ram, and dual 6 core xeons that is still running perfectly, for a motherboard that requires me to spend another $1500 or more to make it into a full pc. The only way I see this being viable is if the motherboard was dead or lying in a closet somewhere... these boards still sell for 500 to 1000$ us on eBay regularly. Thanks for the thought evga, but anyone considering this is nuts IMO.

Who won

Xantac
I would never trade an SR-2 for an X299 Dark , it almost seems like trolling.

 
Well, to put it mildly, you'd have to be a bit mentally challenged to trade in a working SR-2 for the Dark....
Dark won't be worth more than 200 bucks after X399 refresh comes out while SR-2 is and will always be a classic and it's prices are skyrocketing.
 
Trading in a GeForce 4 ACS - OK, 8800 - OK, both are pretty much 'worthless' but an SR-2? Hell nah.

The SR-2 promotion was likely being offered to try to get some units back by EVGA to be refurbished for possible RMA units. The first couple revisions of it had a lifetime warranty, so it stands to reason that more the product ages, the harder it will be for them to keep some in stock for RMA purposes. Not to mention, for every unit they can pull back from the wild, it’s one less unit they have to support with that warranty, assuming the user is the original owner. (Pretty sure the warranty isn’t transferable if you sell it to another person.) It may even have some impact on their financials every year too, having products out there that they still must support 8+ years later, but I’m far from an expert in that area.

Still, X299 Dark does seem like a bit of a ripoff. Would only be worth it if the user was already looking to get rid of the SR-2 and upgrade anyway, but even then, they’d have to max out the X299 RAM and get a CPU good enough to match or beat the max number of cores that can be run on an SR-2. Can get some decent deals on eBay for those LGA1366 Xeons these days, even the highest tier ones. Only reason I can maybe see the X299 Dark being attractive is if the user wanted more PCIe lanes, or PCIe M.2 capability without being hamstrung by the slower PCIe slots in the SR-2. Otherwise, they’d probably be better off keeping it. It runs ESXi just fine. Put a couple 4port 1GbE cards in it (~$50 each on eBay,) or maybe a couple 10GbE Mellanox ConnectX adapters, connect it to a NAS with either NFS or iSCSI, and you’re basically set. Would just need a case to fit the thing, like a Corsair 900D.

One more reason to keep the SR-2: If you set it up to run VMs, a lot of places will run pfSense in a VM, and use it as a router for their home lab, or maybe even the whole house. pfSense requires, or soon will require, a CPU with AES-NI support, like those Xeon 5600 series CPUs. They were the first Xeons to support it. This might have something to do with why the motherboard demands such a premium in the used market.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough. Time to go, and keep dreaming of the day when EVGA might release a successor.