HP Visualize Workstations Demonstrate Leadership Performance Across UNIX System and Windows NT Platforms, According to Industry-standard Benchmarks

Business Wire, August 9, 1999

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 9, 1999--

Demonstrating its continued application-performance leadership in the CAD/CAM/CAE market, Hewlett-Packard Company today announced recent benchmark results of its HP VISUALIZE workstation family with HP VISUALIZE fx graphics(1). According to industry-standard benchmarks, Bench99 and SPECapc for Pro/ENGINEER Release 20(2), HP demonstrated superior performance across both UNIX(R) and Windows NT(R)-based systems, underscoring HP's contribution to design productivity and collaborative engineering.

"PTC and HP have been working closely together for years to always ensure a top-quality, high-performing solution for customers running Pro/ENGINEER on HP hardware," said Glenn Sinclair, hardware partner manager at Parametric Technology Corporation. "Because of this close relationship, we are not surprised to see HP take the number one overall position in the Bench99 tests from Pro/E: The Magazine. Performance like this is just one of the many reasons that HP is consistently a top partner for PTC."

"Our customers demand the most responsive systems because they're pushing the limits of design in technical markets today," said Jim Zafarana, marketing manager of HP's Workstation Systems Division. "The HP VISUALIZE workstation family delivers not only robust performance, but also the choice of UNIX and NT systems, with graphics performance that gives our customers the competitive edge."

Pro/E: The Magazine, an independent publication for Pro/ENGINEER users, published original results of its Bench99 test in its June issue. Bench99, a popular benchmark in the CAD/CAM/CAE market, is designed to measure workstation performance and speed, with special attention paid to those applications of most importance to 3-D CAD designers. June results included the performance of the UNIX-based HP VISUALIZE C3000 workstation and the NT-based HP VISUALIZE P500 Personal Workstation.

Final graphics and overall test scores showed impressive results for HP, with both its UNIX and NT systems being top performers. "HP is the only vendor this year making a strong showing in both the Windows NT and UNIX system world," said editors of Pro/E: The Magazine in its June issue. "HP VISUALIZE workstations deliver peak graphics performance on both Windows NT and the 64-bit HP-UX(3) operating systems."(4)

Latest Performance Results of Bench99 and SPECapc

Recently, with Pro/E: The Magazine's permission, HP conducted the same Bench99 benchmark tests on the HP VISUALIZE C3000 with HP VISUALIZE fx6Pro graphics and the HP VISUALIZE X550 Personal Workstation with HP VISUALIZE fx4 and fx6 graphics system configurations that were not included in the magazine's review. According to these scores, HP's graphics performance tops competing systems and graphics, including workstations from SGI, IBM, Dell, Compaq and Intergraph.

The SPECapc for Pro/ENGINEER Release 20 benchmark is a graphically intense measure based on the concept that system and graphics performance measurement must be based on actual applications. This benchmark is focused entirely on a graphics core functionality, which is the closest representation of what users actually experience when running an application.

Recent tests, performed on HP's VISUALIZE C3000 with P. HP VISUALIZE fx4Pro and fx6Pro graphics and the HP VISUALIZE X550 Personal Workstation with HP VISUALIZE fx4 and fx6 graphics, yielded impressive overall composite and shaded-composite scores, outpacing the competition across UNIX and NT technical-computing systems.

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Top-performing Intel Pentium(R) III Xeon-based Systems

System              Bench99  Bench99     Bench99   SPECapc    SPECapc
                    total    cpuiobench  gbench99  Overall    Shaded
                                                   Composite  Composite

HP VISUALIZE          183.15     90.23      92.91     4.62     5.27
X550 with fx6 (a)

HP VISUALIZE          181.81     89.92      91.89     4.45     4.94
X550 with fx4 (a)

SGI 540(a)            170.6      87.4       83.3      3.89     4.38

MaxVision             169.8      92.2       77.5      3.72     3.64
Symbion Max5200
with Oxygen GVX1

Intergraph GX1        167.8      90.9       76.9      4.23     3.99
WC 4000

IBM Z-Pro             166.1      89.4       76.7      3.85     3.47
WC4000

Compaq SP700          163.7      91.3       72.3      3.90     3.99
with PowerStorm
600

Dell 610 WC           163.1      87         76.1      3.77     3.41
4000



Top-performing RISC-based Systems

System              Bench99  Bench99     Bench99   SPECapc    SPECapc
                    total    cpuiobench  gbench99  Overall    Shaded
                                                   Composite  Composite

HP VISUALIZE            200.1      97.5      102.6    6.01      6.66
C3000 with fx6pro(a)

HP VISUALIZE            198.4      97.2      101.2    5.3       5.43
C3000 with fx4pro

Compaq XP1000           188.0     122.6       65.4     N/A        N/A

(a)  Note: These systems were not included in the original Pro/E: The
     Magazine Workstation Benchmark report.