These boards are basically the same when it comes to core capabilities and performance, but the Supermicro board gives you more of everything - except PCIe 16x lanes. Of course, the board is a huge EATX monster to accommodate all those things...

Basically the Asus is smaller, leaner, and more aimed towards desktop/workstation than server use, so I'd also recommend that unless you are likely to want more RAM than the Asus board can handle (24GB UDIMM or 96GB RDIMM) or need PCI-X. It also gives you the 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes on that first slot - but don't overestimate the relevance of that, for most workloads the difference between 8 and 16 lanes is completely negligible.

Hm. Which programs are you using for 3D editing? I'm asking because Adobe products still seem to rely on single-core performance, and an E5620 without overclocking is quite weak on this regard. For 3D rendering more threads are beneficial I guess but still, at stock speeds the E5620 are quite slow. I am currently using a single E5620 overclocked to 3.9 Ghz and it's okay for what I do but for rendering I would go for dual X5650 (they are also really cheap these day) to make up for weak IPC and low clock speeds since I don't believe you can overclock with these server/workstation boards and EVGA SR-2's are rare and expensive..
If I had to choose between the two boards you mentioned, I would go for the Asus as well.

perkyagnostic wrote:

Hm. Which programs are you using for 3D editing? I'm asking because Adobe products still seem to rely on single-core performance, and an E5620 without overclocking is quite weak on this regard. For 3D rendering more threads are beneficial I guess but still, at stock speeds the E5620 are quite slow. I am currently using a single E5620 overclocked to 3.9 Ghz and it's okay for what I do but for rendering I would go for dual X5650 (they are also really cheap these day) to make up for weak IPC and low clock speeds since I don't believe you can overclock with these server/workstation boards and EVGA SR-2's are rare and expensive..
If I had to choose between the two boards you mentioned, I would go for the Asus as well.

I hope to someday upgrade the 5620s to 5675s. I primarily use Blender for 3d modeling and rendering, but also use substance painter for texturing (trying to learn, rather) and using the Unreal Engine 4 for some animation/scene creation. Occasionally I like to flip back to using Lightwave 3D, but it's so antiquated I'm sure there's no advantage to multi processor systems.

I also tend to have a lot of browser tabs open as I'm working, to reference tutorials, etc.

These two boards are only a little more expensive than boards with no CPU (I've seen a NOS Asus board for about 10 bucks less, no CPUs), and I figure I can make use of the 5620s while I recuperate my savings to buy the 5675s and a decent video card.