HP's new workstation clears graphics bottlenecks

Post, March, 2005 by Ken McGorry

BOSTON -- HP (www.hp.com) introduced its new top-end 64-bit workstation to the crowd at Linux World, here, boasting new, high-speed computing powered by AMD Opteron processors and dual PCI Express graphics from Nvidia (www.nvidia.com). The company stresses that this new workstation will clear the bottlenecks faced by animators working with compute-intensive graphics.

In addition to the noteworthy implementation of AMD processing--which supplants HP's long workstation relationship with Intel, at least for this model--the new xw9300 workstation hits both a high and a low: HP's highest-speed workstation comes with an MSRP under $1,900, putting it well within the reach of an increasingly democratizing graphics and animation market.

Nvidia's contribution, the nForce Professional chipset, enables dual PCI Express X16 graphic slots. Nvidia's dual Quadro FX SLI (Scalable Link Interface) boards ensure high speed for computer visualization tasks. "This new platform introduces Nvidia Quadro SLI, which delivers substantial advancements in design and research capabilities by integrating two PCI Express graphics boards into this HP workstation," says Jeff Brown, Nvidia's GM, professional solutions group.

And HP seems quite proud of its introduction of AMD processing into its workstation line. "For several months, customers have been asking for the AMD Opteron processor in our workstation family, while also calling for increased graphics capability for engineering design, animation development and scientific exploration," says Jim Zafarana, VP, worldwide marketing manager at HP's workstation global business unit.

"The new HP xw9300 workstation, based on the AMD Opteron processor with Direct Connect Architecture, is the next step in high-end visualization workstations," adds Ben Williams, VP commercial and server/workstation business at AMD (www.amd.com).

"HP is responding to the needs of workstation customers who are demanding an AMD Opteron processor-based computing solution that will provide the ultimate in 32- and 64-bit performance."

The HP xw9300 workstation supports two AMD Opteron 200 series processors with the Model 246 (2.0GHz), Model 248 (2.2GHz), Model 250 (2.4GHz), dual Nvidia Quadro PCI Express X16 graphic solutions, the Nvidia nForce Professional MCP, up to 16GB of memory, IEEE 1394 and USB 2.0 ports in the front and back, five internal hard drives for up to 1.5TB of storage, and support for Windows XP Professional and Red Hat Linux WS3.0 (64-bit) operating systems.