I’m waiting for a decent dual socket Core i7 or same generation Xeon motherboard to come out from a good manufacturer, such as Asus.
It seems to just be Intel, Tyan and Supermicro boards so far. Asus lists a couple of P6T boards (P6T6 WS, P6T7 WS) but nothing dual socket yet.
Come to think of it, I wonder what the limit for the number of sockets/cores/threads you can put in Windows 7 is, since Core i7 is 4 cores/8 threads each so dual socket would be 8 cores, 16 threads.
Anyway, if I’m missing something here someone let me know 
Update: Puget build some nice stuff but I’m sure you can get roughly the same performance for much less than $16,000.
- $16,000 4 socket 16 core Operteron PC (more photos)
- 8 socket 32 core Opteron PC (via daughter board)
I’m getting envious of other systems and I haven’t even built this one yet.
Update 2: EVGA’s Classified SR-2 seems to finally meet these needs, although at a major price tag of $600 (which probably means €600 and £600 too)
Update 3: Overclockers UK will start selling this on 1 July 2010 for a ridiculous (as predeicted) £550. However, beware when using this site. I have had problems returning clearly faulty goods to them before (specifically a £400+ HD4870X2 that could not render 3D), which pretty much means you should assume this website has no return policy whatsoever.
It will also only run Xeons anyway which probably puts overclocking off the table, and means you’re only buying this if you want 2-4 graphics cards. I just got a Tyan S7002AG2NR instead and will get a dual-GPU graphics card (a dual GPU fermi if that ever comes out).
Update 4: NEVER buy a Tyan product
The above link for Tyan’s motherboard clearly claims that the board supports “Intel Xeon Processor 5500/ 5600 Series” CPUs, has an icon for 32nm (5600 series) CPUs at the top and also “six core” (5600 series only). However, the board itself does not support 5600 series CPUs at all. Tyan’s idea of “support” for this problem is to tell me to buy 5500 series CPUs instead.
I received the following messages from “Kevin” at Tyan support:
“The 5620 processors are not compatible. Please try a supported processor from our CPU compatibility list”
When I pointed out that 5600 compatibility is clearly listed on their product page, I received the following response:
“The CPU compatibility chart does not specifically state the 5620 as a supported processor for this, or any of the other 7XXX-series motherboards. The board was designed to support the 5600-series processors in the future, but will most likely require a CPU micro-coding update. I highly advise you to obtain a supported processor from our validated list.”
Note that the “CPU compatibility chart” in their support section does not list *any* 5600 series CPUs, even though the product page does. It is not just a problem with the 5620s specifically.
Well, screw that. I’m not going to keep using their faulty and misleading product and spend a fortune on new CPUs (note that Intel CPUs cannot be returned once opened, as they are sealed and become unsaleable if the seal is broken). So, I’m switching to the SuperMicro X8DAL-i board, which SuperMicro assure me will support the 5620 CPUs as long as the board is revision 2.0 or higher. (earlier revisions will also support it but lose a couple of features and require a BIOS update that you can’t flash unless you have a spare Xeon 5500 lying around – the Rev. 2.0 boards come with all of the features and the supported BIOS out of the box)
I’m posting this message as a warning to anyone looking to buy a component from Tyan in the future. Their advertising is not just misleading but outright wrong, their products are faulty, and their support is terrible. Do not buy from them. Maybe if they lose enough business they will sort themselves out.