EVGA reveals SR-X dual-socket Sandy Bridge-E board

The Tech Report spotted EVGA's SR-X at CES 2012, you can check it out over here.This enthusiast board takes two Sandy Bridge-E Xeon processors.

The new SR-X retains the dual-Xeon design of its forebear but swaps that board's LGA1366 sockets for compatibility with Intel's 2011-pin Sandy Bridge-E silicon. Alas, you won't be able to plug a couple of desktop-oriented CPUs like the Core i7-3960X into the SR-X; it's designed for Xeons exclusively. Just two Sandy Bridge-E based Xeons offer plenty of PCI Express 3.0 connectivity, allowing the SR-X to serve its seven expansion slots without tapping the PCIe lanes built into the chipset. EVGA does use a PLX switch chip to split the PCIe 3.0 lanes between the multiple slots, though.

On the chipset front, the board features an "Intel C600" platform hub that looks an awful like what the X79 should have been. See that pair of SAS connectors in the bottom right-hand corner of the board? It seems Intel has resolved the storage-controller issues that left the X79 with no more SATA ports than a run-of-the-mill desktop chipset.

EVGA reveals SR-X dual-socket Sandy Bridge-E board - More news at DV Hardware

Intel Sandy Bridge-E to get C2 stepping after launch

VR Zone reports Intel's Sandy Bridge-E will get a C2 stepping likely sometime near the very end of the year. This new stepping will fix some issues with VT-d.

We knew that Intel's Sandy Bridge-E chips were big and complicated to make, but what we didn't expect was that Intel was going to continuously keep running into problems. The current C1 stepping is apparently having problems with VT-d, not a major issue for most consumers' maybe, but it's a huge problem when it comes to Xeon chips and as such Intel is working on the C2 stepping to fix this "errata".

The only good news here for Intel, if you look at that way, is that its current Extreme Edition CPU's don't support VT-d, neither does the Sandy Bridge K-SKU CPU's, so as far as the consumer platform is concerned it looks like there won't be any further delays, but the initial batch should be C1 stepping rather than C2. The C1 stepping should be in production by now, or by the latest by next week, although we don't know when Intel will kick off production of the C2 stepping, but it's very possible it won't be until next year as qualification samples of the C2 stepping isn't expected until the very end of the year.

Intel Sandy Bridge-E to get C2 stepping after launch - More news at DV Hardware