Full article is available for a fee
David Cohn, April 16, 2007
CADCAMNet recently looked at the latest high-end
workstations from
HP, the Intel “Woodcrest”
Xeon-based xw8400 and AMD Opteron-equipped xw9400 as well as the Dell
690 and 490 workstations. While those systems certainly deliver the
maximum performance currently available, they are probably beyond the
budgets of the average CAD user and overkill for most midrange MCAD
applications. A more likely candidate for most readers is the HP xw4400
Workstation, a system based on the Intel Core 2 Duo “Conroe” processor
and 975X Express chipset.
The xw4400 is housed in the now familiar HP black and
gray convertible minitower case. No tools are required to open or
upgrade the workstation and the system easily converts from tower to
desktop by rotating the optical drive bays. The front panel provides two
USB 2.0 connectors, headphone and microphone jacks, and an optional
FireWire connector.
As we’ve come to expect, there’s lots of room for
expansion inside the well organized case. The HP motherboard provides
four DIMM sockets and can accommodate up to 8GB of memory using 2GB
DIMMs.
Surprising Results
Although equipped with a midrange graphics accelerator
rather than the high-end boards, the xw4400 performed extremely well,
clearly validating the purported performance benefits of Intel’s Core 2
Duo architecture.
SPEC Viewperf benchmark results. Taller bars indicate better
performance. (Click to view larger image)
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