In the past, Supermicro has been known for producing, obviously large motherboards. However, rather than being crowned the bloatware king of the motherboard world, Supermicro packs much more than empty space onto their high quality PCB's.  Their motherboards have always been top notch in terms of performance, expandability and definitely stability in do-or-die workstation or server situations.  With the rate of Supermicro's growth surpassing the offerings of Intel's Pentium II/BX chipset combination, it was time for a change, and walking hand in hand with Intel's latest "monsterpiece," the Xeon, Supermicro managed to bring it to the public once again with their Supermicro S2DGU; but with the competitive nature of the market increasing, can Supermicro stand up to the demands of the community they once dominated?  There's only one way to find out...

New AnandTech Report Card Rating
80/C+

Do not compare newer scores to older ones, the newer scores are much more aggressive

The Good

Size is definitely noticeable, especially in the case of the S2DGU, whose ATX layout can often be mistaken for a monster AT style motherboard.   The board itself features 5 PCI slots, accompanied by its 2 ISA and single AGP slot, in addition to the RAID extension to the second PCI slot.  Running parallel to the AGP slot are the four SDRAM DIMM slots which allow for up to 2GB of SDRAM to be installed when taking advantage of the S2DGU's Dual Processor capabilities.

Before journeying to the realm of the multiprocessing environment the S2DGU makes sure that it has all other ends covered.   Starting off with the standard Super I/O on-board with your basic Ultra ATA IDE ports and your FDD controller, the S2DGU expands on the "average Joe" motherboard by adding a dedicated 68-pin UltraWide SCSI-3 channel as well as a dedicated 68-pin Ultra2 SCSI channel for high performance storage solutions.  At the heart of its SCSI support (not to mention its 50-pin 8/16-bit connector for backwards compatibility) resides an Adaptec 7890 integrated controller which allows for the performance and the compatibility that you'll see with the on-board SCSI of the S2DGU.   While many critics of on-board SCSI will argue that having such a feature limits the future expandability of your system, with Ultra3 SCSI due out much later in 1999 or 2000, and Ultra2 SCSI being the current cream of the crop when it comes to high speed storage interfaces for most users, the on-board 7890 should be more than adequate for the useful life of such a high-end motherboard.  Luckily, Supermicro had the foresight to bundle the S2DGU with, not only the standard set of HDD/FDD cables, but an internal 68-pin LVD/SE SCSI cable with an active terminator on it for use with either your new Ultra2 devices in LVD mode or your older UWSCSI-3 devices in SE mode.  This little cable/terminator can be a lifesaver as most newer hard drives such as the Seagate Cheetah 2 (Ultra2 SCSI) by default don't ship with these $40+ additions.  Coming from a user with experience in being stuck with an awesome hard drive without the proper cables for a night, you'll definitely appreciate Supermicro's decision to include such a cable.

Tightly packaged next to the memory banks on the motherboard is the core of the solution, Intel's 440GX chipset.  The 440GX chipset is what allows for memory expansion up to the 2GB mark, and if you've ever experienced working with a high-trafficked web server you'll definitely begin to appreciate the beauty of that memory allowance.  While the 440BX chipset is hardly any different from the GX chipset in a performance sense, once the need for greater than 512MB of SDRAM arises, you're going to have to ditch that limitation along with the BX chipset in order to make the jump to 768MB or more. 

Naturally, such a motherboard wouldn't be complete without dual processor capability as lightly alluded to above.  The S2DGU features dual Slot-2 support and is bundled with a processor terminator card, the Supermicro TRMS2, just in case you aren't going to be taking advantage of the second CPU slot just yet.  The performance increase a dual processor system provides over a single processor system is often directly dependent on the type of application the system will be put to use on.  As a web server, there is a definite improvement in performance with two CPU's running in conjunction with one another as opposed to a single processor, however as a high-end graphics workstation, the performance increase is often negligible when compared to the price of adding a second CPU.  With an operating system such as Windows NT (Windows 9x doesn't support multiprocessor systems, the second processor will remain un-used), adding a second processor almost never means doubling your overall performance.  Once again depending on the type of application the upgraded system will be running the overall effect of a second processor varies.  This can be greatly attributed to two main factors: 1) A multiprocessor system must have a method of dividing the tasks among its processors in an efficient manner, a process which often removes some of the performance benefit of having more than one processor, and 2) An operating system must be specifically written for multiprocessor systems in order to gain the most benefit from such configurations. 

The key point to keep in mind is statement #2, and case in point would be the BeOS from Be Inc.  If you will recall, when AnandTech reviewed the BeOS back when R2 was the currently available product, the performance increase experienced with a dual processor system over a single processor system was significant.   In actuality, adding a second processor to a system running the BeOS almost doubles the system's overall performance, simply because of the manner in which the BeOS was written.  So there are good implementations of multiprocessor configurations, you just need to search for them.

Installing and configuring the S2DGU wasn't too big of an ordeal, a simple jumper setup and a quick installation of AnandTech's test processor, an Intel Pentium II Xeon 400 (1MB) allowed the system to boot up fairly quickly and without any troubles.  For compatibility testing a PCI sound card and a PCI Ethernet adapter were both installed, both without a hitch.  Following in the standard Supermicro tradition, the AMI BIOS setup on the board (not WinBIOS this time) allows for just about every possible configuration setting to be manipulated, and both the board and BIOS are aided by two separate manuals (the other is for the Adaptec SCSI) both are well written and provided directly by Supermicro.  Supermicro tops the cake off with average stability for a motherboard of this class, and a drivers/utilities CD-ROM.  

The performance of the S2DGU can't really be compared to any other motherboards reviewed on AnandTech as it is the first of the batch of Xeon boards to be featured on the site, however don't expect many motherboards to deviate from the performance pattern you'll see with the S2DGU.  With the final question on everyone's mind being, can you overclock the S2DGU?  The shocking answer...yes.  Under the chipset features setting of the AMI BIOS setup, an option for Manufacture setting is present with a default setting of Mode 0.  Mode 0 corresponds to a 100MHz FSB setting, with Mode 1 also corresponding to that setting.   Mode 2 is the turbo frequency of the 100MHz FSB (103MHz), and Mode 3 is the 112MHz FSB option.  There are no options in the BIOS for any other FSB settings higher than 112MHz.  Not too bad for a high-end server motherboard...

The first of a few problems you may have with the Supermicro S2DGU is the incredible size of the board itself and the chassis requirements for operation with a Xeon processor installed.  This is definitely not a motherboard you can pop in a cheap $70 ATX case and hope it'll work, actually, most of Supermicro's line of cases won't even work with the motherboard!  Luckily, Supermicro is providing a few modifications to its SC-750A case design to accommodate for such a motherboard which does help a little, however if you can't find a newer SC-750A, have fun finding an abundant supply of Xeon-compatible cases. 

One of the biggest problems AnandTech had with the motherboard was with a little jumper labeled JP20.  In the initial testing of the motherboard the system would not boot at all, however this wasn't because of a fault in configuring the system, rather an option on the motherboard to select the power save state.  As described in the manual:

"Power Save State Select is used when you want the system to be in power off state the first time you apply power to the system or when the system comes back from AC power failure.  In this sate, the power will not come on unless you hit the power switch on the motherboard.  PIIX4 control is used if you want the system to be in power on state the first time you apply power to the system or when the system comes back from AC power failure."

What does all that mean?  Well, it means that if your system doesn't boot up properly on the first try, try setting the jumper to 1-2 instead of the default 2-3 setting.  If left ignored, that little $0.10 jumper can cause you quite a bit of pain and frustration.

With the motherboard industry slowly moving towards the PC99 specification, it would've been nice for Supermicro to follow in their competitor's footsteps.  While Tyan has already produced a motherboard with 6 PCI slots and just made a motherboard available with 6 PCI slots without using another PCI-to-PCI bridge, Supermicro does seem a little behind the times with the S2DGU.   Hopefully we'll see a 6+ PCI slot design in the near future from Supermicro, but you can never predict the future until it actually happens.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: Mushkin SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB Mushkin PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.mushkin.com

The Test

As you'll notice, the AnandTech testing methodology has changed a little bit with the introduction of Ziff Davis' Winstone 99 benchmarking software.  Winstone 99 picks up where Winstone 98 left off by testing true real-world performance in multitasking environments.  Winstone 99 runs three to four simultaneous applications for all of its three tests, including two or more programs from an office suite while a web browser surfs some locally stored pages.  While the performance difference between motherboards tested under Winstone 99 will be negligible, the number of times Winstone 99 failed during the 24 hour testing period AnandTech now puts all motherboards through is an incredibly accurate indicator of the board's overall stability and is directly factored into the stability rating of the board.  A performance difference of over 2 Winstone 99 points is definitely merit for a higher performance rating, however differences of 0.5 and 1 point are negligible in real world situations.

How I Tested

• Each Winstone 99 benchmark was run off and on over a 24 hour period with a minimum of 5 test runs. The number of failures were recorded and the average of all scores was taken.

• No foreign drivers were present in the test system other than those required for the system to function to the best of its ability

• All foreign installation files were moved to a separate partition during the test as to prevent them from effecting the test results

• All tests were conducted at 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color

• 3D Winbench 99 tests were double buffered and conducted at 800 x 600 x 16-bit color

The Final Decision

As a high-end, dual processor, Xeon motherboard, the Supermicro S2DGU does a fine job of doing all that is asked of it and a little more with the standard Supermicro style.  Unfortunately the design does leave a few things to be desired from the motherboard such as more expansion slots, and even a more stable design, in a server environment, even a single failure can be fatal for your network...just imagine if the motherboard AnandTech's server is running on crashed "just once..."