Just three months ago, the not nearly saturated motherboard market was blessed by the entrance of a new comer to the industry, RIOWORKS.  March 16, 1999 marked the introduction of the company in Hanover, Germany during this year's CeBIT convention.  Since then they have made a single appearance on AnandTech, while the review of RIOWORKS' PDB-S wasn't a stellar one, it did point out RIOWORKS' strengths and weaknesses. 

As a follow-up, AnandTech will be taking a look at a higher end solution from RIOWORKS, the dual slot-2 Xeon XDG series is intended to extend RIOWORKS' low-cost, high performance philosophy by bringing the power of the Intel Xeon processor to the hands of smaller businesses and high end users on a budget with a "low" cost Xeon board. 

With most Xeon boards starting at around the $500 - $600 mark, a low cost Xeon board would translate into something closer to the $300 - $400 mark.  While the XDG-LS AnandTech reviewed didn't quite cut it in terms of price, it is a motherboard that can most likely be found at a cost somewhat lower than competing Xeon solutions.  But how good is the board itself?  Let's take a look at the basic specifications first...

AnandTech Report Card Rating
85/B

The Good

As with all dual Xeon boards, the two SC330 (slot-2) connectors are placed extremely close to one another and are then placed very close to the 443GX chip in order to decrease trace lengths between these critical components of the motherboard.  The board does ship with a SC330 CPU terminator card in the event that the motherboard will operate in single processor mode only, and features the massive Xeon CPU retention kit as well.  The board only supports the 100MHz FSB and clock multipliers ranging from 4.0x to 6.0x.  As with all desktop Intel CPUs, the Xeons are clock multiplier locked, meaning that as long as there is BIOS support for faster 100MHz FSB Xeon processors the XDG-LS will support them.   Unlike most other Xeon motherboards, the XDG-LS is a jumperless solution which makes the installation and configuration of the board even easier than most boards already are.  A definite plus as any system admin will have bigger things on his/her mind than where the heck JP3 is on a motherboard.

The RIOWORKS XDG is available in three flavors, the XDG-L, XDG-S, and the XDG-LS which was the sample provided to AnandTech for review.  The three boards are built on the same PCB, and are essentially the same board with the XDG-L featuring on-board 10/100 Ethernet, the XDG-S featuring on-board Ultra2 SCSI, and the XDG-LS featuring both on-board 10/100 Ethernet and Ultra2 SCSI.  If you're going to be running the board as a stand alone workstation for CAD/Design, development, etc.. then you may opt to get the XDG-S which doesn't feature the on-board Ethernet controller.  Or if you have your own 10/100 Ethernet controller the XDG-S will give you the on-board Ultra2 SCSI that you may be looking for.  As a server, you may want to opt for the XDG-LS which has both the on-board Ethernet and SCSI adapters, as chances are that you'll be making much use of both of those features. 

The on-board Intel 82558B 10/100 Ethernet controller makes an appearance on the RIOWORKS XDG-LS and the XDG-L.  The on-board Intel controller does a fine job of making sure that your system stays connected to whatever network you need it to stay connected to, while it isn't the same controller that powers the server adapters, it's good enough for most uses.  The board features an auto-sensing 10/100 CAT-5 port on the ATX backpanel , which unfortunately means that all standard ATX backpanel cutouts will be useless with the board and RIOWORKS provides you with no replacement.  This isn't an issue if you don't mind not having an ATX backpanel cutout installed which is always an option, but be prepared.  

Continuing the trend of on-board peripherals, the XDG-LS and the XDG-S both feature an on-board Adaptec 7890 Ultra2 SCSI controller.  The controller provides for a single 68-pin UltraWide SCSI-3 channel that is shared with a 50-pin Legacy SCSI connector, and a separate 68-pin Ultra2 SCSI channel for all Ultra2 devices, yet it is backwards compatible with all older SCSI peripherals in the event that you have no Ultra2 devices.

To power all of this, as with most server motherboards, the XDG (all models) feature two redundant ATX power supply connectors for use with server cases that support redundant power supplies.  A total of 6 fan connectors are present on the motherboard to support most cooling configurations you'll cook up with your server.  Hardware monitoring is made possible via two Winbond 83782D hardware monitors, each of which is capable of monitoring two fans, up to three temperatures, and 7 voltages.  The combination of the two chips leaves two of the six fans without hardware monitoring support, which isn't bad at all considering there are some server motherboards that don't even feature 4 fan connectors.   It is obvious that hardware monitoring was an important consideration RIOWORKS made when designing the XDG series, and a definitely worth while consideration on their part.  

Software support for the on-board hardware monitoring chips is provided in the form of a bundled CD that contains the drivers for the on-board Ethernet and SCSI adapters as well as your standard patches and utilities.  The bundled CD also contains the XDG-LS user's manual in an Adobe Acrobat .pdf format.  The SCSI drivers are also provided to you via four 3.5" floppy disks just in case you happen to have a SCSI CD-ROM drive and can't gain access to it right away.

The board is bundled with a 50-pin legacy SCSI cable as well as a 68-pin Ultra2 cable with an LVD terminator for any Ultra2 drives you may want to install as they usually don't come with the necessary LVD terminators.  The cables alone are worth over $40, which is a bundle you should demand your motherboard manufacturer to support (most of them do).  It's simply ridiculous spending over $500 on a motherboard and not being able to set it up right away due to a lack of the proper cables. 

The RIOWORKS XDG-LS ran side by side with the Epox GXB-M and performed, amazingly enough, identically to the GXB-M in virtually all tests (scores differed by no more than 2%).  This also means that the stability of the XDG-LS was on-par with the GXB-M, while that doesn't mean it's ready for use in a server that gets millions of requests per day, it does mean that RIOWORKS is ready to be taken seriously, and they do have the products to back them.  It seems like RIOWORKS has accomplished in 3 months what some manufacturers still haven't accomplished after being in the industry for years, the ability to deliver on their claims.  They claim to be able to produce cost effective motherboard solutions without sacrificing stability, and they deliver just that.

The Bad

While the XDG-LS does support 6 fan connectors, they are scattered all over the motherboard.  The two CPU fan connectors are closer to the on-board IDE connectors than either of the SC330 slots, meaning you better pray that your CPU fans have long power cables on them, or you'll be looking for some extension cables. 

The AMI BIOS setup of the RIOWORKS XDG seems to pale in comparison to the latest releases from Award, including their newest 4.60PG utility.  For years AMI has been used for server platforms, however it seems that unless some changes are implemented in AMI's standard BIOS setup utility, Award's utility may be a better option. 

As with all RIOWORKS boards (something that can be expected), the XDG is going to be much more difficult to find than competing motherboards.  In fact, AnandTech's searches revealed that the RIOWORKS boards could not be found for sale anywhere, translating into a bit of a problem if you're even remotely interested in the motherboard.  When it comes to presence in the industry, there is still no beating Supermicro/Tyan, it'll take some time before that changes, much longer than the 3 months RIOWORKS has been working on motherboards.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• Number of Rear 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: 2 x 64MB Mushkin PC100 SDRAM; 2 x 64MB Memory-Man PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 256MB Corsair PC100 SDRAM DIMM (for compatibility testing only)

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

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

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

AnandTech Motherboard Testing Methodology

The Final Decision

The XDG is a decent solution, not the best, and far from the worst.  Does it mean that you should go out and embrace RIOWORKS as a high end motherboard supplier?  Not at all, however it does mean that if the price is right, RIOWORKS is a company worth watching.  If it's true that all companies eventually get their 15 minutes of fame, when RIOWORKS gets theirs, the results should be quite interesting to say the least...

How it Rates

Click Here to learn about AnandTech's Motherboard Testing Methodology.