W790 Motherboard discussion thread

[heromode]

Manufacturers & Manuals:

Asus Pro WS W790-ACE $899.99 @ newegg
Pro WS W790-ACE｜Motherboards｜ASUS Global
Link to manual (PDF)

Asus Pro WS W790E-SAGE $1,299.99 @ newegg
Pro WS W790E-SAGE SE｜Motherboards｜ASUS Global
Link to manual (PDF)

ASRock W790 WS $879.99 @ newegg
ASRock W790 WS
Link to manual (PDF)

Supermicro X13SWA-TF $2,999.99 @ newegg
X13SWA-TF | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro
Link to manual (PDF)

Supermicro X13SRA-TF
X13SRA-TF | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro
Link to manual (PDF)

Gigabyte MW83-RP0
MW83-RP0 (rev. 1.0) | Server Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global
Link to manual (PDF)

Gigabyte MW53-HP0
MW53-HP0 (rev. 1.0) | Server Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global
Link to manual (PDF)

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Compatible (presumably) ECC rdimm:
Samsung RDIMM 32GB, DDR5-4800, CL40-40-40-77 (M321R4GA3BB6-CQK) 151-156 EUR
DDR5 (RDIMM, ECC REG, REG ECC) for sale | eBay

Articles & forum threads:
ASUS Launches the Pro WS W790 Series of Workstation Motherboards - Techpowerup.com
https://www.servethehome.com/new-wo...xeon-w-3400-xeon-w-2400-and-w790-launch-asus/
ASUS Pro WS W790 Series workstation motherboards and Intel Xeon W-3400 CPUs make a potent combination - Edge Up
Giga Computing Releases First Workstation Motherboards to Support DDR5 and PCIe Gen5 Technologies | News - GIGABYTE Global
Giga Computing Releases First Workstation Motherboards to Support DDR5 and PCIe Gen5 Technologies - Techpowerup.com
4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Sprints into the Market - Techpowerup.com
ASRock W790 WS Achieves Multiple Overclocking Records on HWBOT - Techpowerup.com
Intel Xeon W9-3495X Can Pull up to 1,900 Watts in Extreme OC Scenarios - Techpowerup.com
ASUS Pro WS W790E-SAGE SE Sets 10 World Records and Wins 23 First Places - Techpowerup.com

 

[ServerSemi]

I hope these cpu compete with Threadripper Pro cpu's. Amd just got greedy and is dragging their feet because they are on top.

 

[unwind-protect]

Why no Thunderbolt?

 

[111alan]

I still think dual icelake platform is a better choice. The performance of 4th gen Xeon is worse than ideal. I don't think SPR XCC can go core-to-core, watt-to-watt(TDP) against icelake in most unaccelerated scenarios, from what I saw in our tests. MCC chips should have a chance in that respect, but they have less cores. And the price for these kinds of motherboards and CPUs... It's a good guess that they are not cheap.

I don't think AMD is on top either. Being a workstation means that the machine can handle daily tasks like gaming, "intensive" 3D modeling and web-browsing, which EPYCs did pretty badly in all of them due to its slow IFs.

I think the biggest purpose of W790 is to service the overclock players. 8490H, running at 2.8-2.9GHz, will eat up its 350W tdp easily. That means, a 60 core spr overclocked to 4GHz, should have a more than 800W power consumption. Not very practical if you really want to do some real jobs with it.

 

[Patrick]

I am pretty sure we are going to do a piece on at least one of these.

 

[MichalPL]

Wow - they look really promising! Don't have access to any of them right now so can guess. A quick math.

P cores inside new W9 is much faster than Zen3 and slightly faster than Zen4 (almost identical)

My guess is (4.8GHz models): ~3950 Passmark in the single core (5995wx - 3302pt, Epyc Genoa 9654 - 2893pt, 7950x - 4313pt, 13900KS - 4812pt)
and easy overclocking up to ~4200pt (fastest Ryzen 7000 area).

math (13900KS - 4812pt):
4812/6.0GHz*4.8GHz=3850pt + 100pt because of larger cache than i9 12/13gen. result should be around 3950pt (maybe even 4000)

Multicore (56cores) - I don't know, hard to calculate because of the temperatures and power limits.
math says should be around 80% speed of the TR5995WX stock, probably Intel done many things right - so should be faster than pure math so guessing ~92% of the TR5995WX. Probably after overclocking will beat it.

 

[MichalPL]

I don't think AMD is on top either. Being a workstation means that the machine can handle daily tasks like gaming, "intensive" 3D modeling and web-browsing, which EPYCs did pretty badly in all of them due to its slow IFs.

For gaming any modern Epyc and (almost) all TR's are fast enough, some E7v4 is still fine too together with old 1650v2 (after overclocking) - tested recently 1650v2@4.2 + 64GB + GF3090, still ok.

Fully agree they are slow in single core tasks.

(almost) For sure new Xeons will crush all Epycs/TRs/Xeons Gold/Platinium 4th gen. in this area.

Passmark

I forgot, I prefer Passmark points not CB R23, It might scale very similar but CB is mostly AVX FPU coprocessor test only (and since RTX, testing things that are important only for raytracing cores in graphics cards).

 

[heromode]

the ACE manual mentions the board can be powered by one or two PSU's. It also has a PCIE 8pin connector for extra juice to the pcie slots. Page 48-49 in the manual

 

[custom90gt]

I want two of these, lol. I'm curious what 8 channel DDR5 looks like...

 

[heromode]

Skimming the manual all the pcie slots also support x4 bifurcation, up to 16 x pcie gen5 x4 devices. Bifurcation can be set in BIOS.

 

[unwind-protect]

Why no Thunderbolt?

Here's a board with Thunderbolt (ASrock):

ASRock W790 WS

Supports 4th Gen Intel Xeon W W-3400 and W-2400 Processors (LGA4677)<br />20+2 Power Phase, 90A SPS Design<br />14 Layer Server-Grade Ultra Low-Loss PCB<br />Supports DDR5 ECC, buffered memory up to 6800+(OC)<span style=color:red;>*</span><br />4 PCIe 5.0 x16, 1 PCIe 4.0 x16<br />4 Blazing M.2...

www.asrock.com

Manual:

https://download.asrock.com/Manual/W790%20WS.pdf

 

[gb00s]

 

[Bert]

Great we can overclock on the new Asus WS 790 motherboards. That will be my next upgrade from my current Evga SR-3. I guess in 3 years when the prices are down to earth, possibly a refurbished one.

 

[unwind-protect]

Supermicro board:

X13SWA-TF | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro

 

[heromode]

Everyone is suddenly copying Asus's ACE series and making black motherboards.

Edit: Updated the OP topic to general W790 thread, added links to Manufacturers and manuals

 

[heromode]

The ASRock has 2x Marvell Aquantia 10GbE + Intel i225LM 2.5 GbE LAN, and 2x Thunderbolt. (and probably a kidney donor program)

 

[RolloZ170]

Everyone is suddenly copying Asus's ACE series and making black motherboards.

supermicro X11SRA black
supermicro X11SPA black
supermicro X12SPA black
supermicro X13SWA black
MSI's are black...

 

[unwind-protect]

The ASRock has 2x Marvell Aquantia 10GbE + Intel i225LM 2.5 GbE LAN, and 2x Thunderbolt. (and probably a kidney donor program)

What's the driver situation for those Aquantia NICs in Linux and FreeBSD? A quick google gives mixed impressions. Anybody with hands-on experience?

 

[heromode]

What's the driver situation for those Aquantia NICs in Linux and FreeBSD? A quick google gives mixed impressions. Anybody with hands-on experience?

no experience, but the ASRock has the Marvell Aquantia AQC113CS, and the PDF just mentions "Linux 3.10 and higher.", no mention of BSD.

https://www.marvell.com/content/dam...cs-aqc114cs-aqc115c-aqc116c-product-brief.pdf

Guess skimming linux and bsd kernel developer lists is needed for more info

edit: product page mentions:

• Driver support: Windows 10 and Windows 11 (64-bit), Linux 3.10 and higher, FreeBSD 12, DPDK, VMware ESXI

but the drivers page has nothing for AQC113CS

Ethernet Network Adapters and Controllers | AQtion Ethernet Controllers | Client Computing at its Best - Marvell

edit2:
GitHub - Aquantia/AQtion: Aquantia AQC multigigabit NIC linux driver (atlantic) - development preview
GitHub - Aquantia/aqtion-freebsd: Aquantia AQC multigigabit NIC FreeBSD driver - development preview

edit3:
FreshPorts -- net/aquantia-atlantic-kmod: Aquantia AQtion (Atlantic) Network Driver (Development Preview)

 

[RussianE39]

It's sad that only W790E-SAGE and X13SWA-TF has 8 memory channels. And X13SWA-TF has very weak VRM and still zero overclocking features in BIOS, so basically there is only one (SAGE) usable motherboard for that platform.