I don't have the motherboard brand/model in front of me, but I'll try and find it.
The machine is a renderBoxx 10100 from 2/2007. It's part of a small render farm doing Maya rendering, using PipelineFX Qube as the queueing software. Runs Maya both in batch and interactive mode, but this is strictly a server machine (no GUI).
So, it's very FP intensive with a fair amount of I/O as well. Reading in large models (locally) and then writing 1-2MB frames every 60s or so (Networked RAID array, MetaLAN over 1GB ethernet). According to various benchmarks, the move from a 1.6GHz E5300 to a 2.5GHz E5400 or X5300 *should* yield a pretty significant gain. Perhaps 50-100%. At $250-300/processor that would be very worthwhile to us.
I realize that the CPU is only one factor involved. The MB has a 1333Mhz FSB and 4GB DDR2 667 (ECC) memory. Memory usage is typically low, although Maya interactive mode occasionally goes into a garbage collection cycle. These are dual CPU machines with 2 nodes per box. I'll try and find the motherboard make/model and the BIOS info. I'll be swapping a hard drive on Tuesday and will look for FSB partity settings. Thanks!
Steve