LeadSled
I was wondering if the X79 Classified will support more then just the desktop cpu's and include some of the XEON E CPU's ?
In the past, single-socket Xeons went into the same chipset as desktop, that is very slowly not becoming the case anymore; Intel doesn't want us to mix and match board and CPU because it means a lost sale. A dollar for Intel isn't a dollar for Intel, unless enough get sold to make up for the lack of Core i sales.
When X58 debuted, Nehalem Xeons didn't exist for anoher quarter, even then the single-QPI Xeon 3500 (which was the Xeon equivalent of i7 and meant for X58 only) wasn't officially supported on EVGA X58's until about that summer 2009, a quarter later. Only because of their SR-2 that appeared a year later did EVGA include dual-QPI Xeons in X58 in certain revisions of their X58...meaning older ones didn't have the option. I bought my X58 a month after debut, the only Xeons I can have are the 3500 and 3600 series, I don't get the option for any 5500 or 5600 CPUs because it isn't just about changing the BIOs chip. I'm speaking about EVGA only, it is a vendor specific situation based on each company's market. For instance, Supermicro sells mainly servers to business so their X58's from the begining had both i7 and both Xeon flavor support from the get go.
Chances are Supermicro's X79 support i7's and SB-EP parts from the get go and are just waiting for Intel to debut the Xeon E5's, but EVGA may not because of the type of customers they generally cater to, thus initial board revisions may not support E5-2600's. That's the whole reason behind SR-X, for those CPU's meant to be paired. I hope you all are content with your i7's in case that doesn't happen. SR-X won't appear until SNB-EP appears sometime early next year, probably March because that's when Xeon 5500 appeared in 2009. By then PCie 3.0 support will be official and anything lacking in those chipsets from the first batch of X79's, thus new X79 revisions from all companies. Not saying you guys won't have 3.0 support, it is already in the CPU just waiting for final certifiation, thus not enabled yet.
Also, the first 32nm Xeon E5's are the 1P E5-1600 and 2P E5-2600, and that max is an
8-cores at 3.1GHz; the only 10-core model is Westmere-EX. The 4P E5-4600 that may house more cores isn't automatically compatible with SR-X, let alone X79. Remember, Intel made similar sockets as a cost cutting measure,
their convinience and not ours. You won't be able to mix and match until EVGA gives a green light-- for EVGA's own convinience. That said, your best best for more cores will be from Ivy Bridge-EP for boards like SR-X, and at most an 8-core i7 for X79 as Ivy Bridge-E. Don't assume Ivy Bridge-EX (while LGA0211) is automatically backwards compatible, it won't be.
Also, in case some of you didn't know, the current Westmere-EX 10-cores have a premium for being quad-socket capable and the 2.4GHz model costs
$4600. Chances are the E5-4600 successor in quad LGA2011 will cost about the same -- I don't know who here with an X79 genuinely wants a +$4000 processor that will barely perform 50% faster than any i7 3900 in fully multi-threaded apps, but its your call, your money afterall.
IMO, if you're interested in many core fully multi-threaded apps, you're money is better spent getting an
$800 AMD quad G34 board and four
$540 16-core Opterons. Can't overclock them, but that's sixty-four x86 cores for under $3000 w/o the RAM. You'll spend close to 25k for a single quad-LGA2011 Intel system -- which of course is a drop in the bucket to a business that buys dozens and gets them paid off in a matter of months. Many enthusiasts are not using their system to pay the bills, just to put things into perspective. In the multi-socket world, the typical enthusiast turns into a budget builder.