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David Cohn, March 26, 2007
Last month, we looked at the Dell Precision 690, the company’s
top-of-the-line workstation (see “Dell
Precision 690 Workstation: Big, Powerful, and Pricey”). While the
690 definitely set the standard for the ultimate workstation
performance, it’s a very big, very expensive system. Since the 690 is
likely to be beyond both the needs and budget of the average MCAD user,
we were quite pleased when Dell also sent us its slightly more modest
Precision 490 workstation.
Like the 690, the Dell Precision 490 uses the Intel 5100-series
“Woodcrest” dual-core Xeon processor, and like its larger sibling, our
evaluation unit came equipped with two Core-Duo Intel Xeon 5160 3.0GHz
CPUs with 1333MHz front side bus and 4MB of shared L2 cache. The
Precision 490 looks like a scaled down version of its larger sibling.
Housed in a similar gray and black case, it measures a more modest
6.73”x18.54”x17.64” (WxDxH) and tips the scales at 43 pounds, nearly 20
pounds less than the 690. Unlike the 690, however, the Precision 490 can
be converted to a desktop orientation by rotating its front panel drive
bays.
The rear panel provides two 9-pin serial ports, a 25-pin parallel
port, five more USB ports, an RJ45 connector for the integrated Broadcom
5752 Gigabit Ethernet LAN, PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, audio-in,
and audio-out.
The Dell motherboard is based on the Intel 5000X chipset and provides
eight memory sockets. Our unit came with 2GB memory, installed using
four 512MB quad-channel DDR2 full buffered DIMMs. Up to 32MB of RAM can
be accommodated using 4GB DIMMs.
CAD Benchmark Results
Our actual results showed the Dell Precision 490 to be just slightly
slower than the 690 on all of the SPECopc viewperf tests of graphic
performance. The Precision 490 lagged behind the 690 by an average of 18
percent.
(Click to view larger image)
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