HP goes octal with workstations
Packing Xeon heat
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In the bad old days, you had to plod along with a workstation running on a creaky 400MHz chip. Now companies like HP are cramming up to 8 cores worth of speedy Xeons into a single desktop.
In mid-December, HP should start shipping the xw6600 and HP xw8600. Both systems will run on Intel's upcoming line of 45nm dual-core and quad-core chips. So, if you have cash to burn, you can slap two four-core chips in one of these systems and render the hell out of a Photoshop image.
The systems have room for dual PCI Express Gen2 x16 graphics slots, up to 128GB of memory (on the beefier xw8600) and 5TB of storage.
The energy conscious will note that the systems also ship with 80 per cent efficient power supplies, which is decent.
HP expects the systems to start around $1,200, although you'll pay a heck of a lot more than that for fully-packed versions. ®
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COMMENTS
Different in so many ways
From what I gather, the HP doesnt use the insane FBDIMM type memory as the macs do. The stuff that costs a fortune and chews through power.
It will use more standard ddr2 memory. 16*8gb sticks will still hit the wallet however..........
Also the mac has sata bays. The HP has SAS bays....
Energy conscious PSU?
Laughed my posterior off at that one.
FWIW, the energy conscious wouldn't be buying an 8 core, 2 processor desktop with two Graphics adaptors, 128 Gig of RAM and 5TB of disk.
It reminds me of when Jaguar cars stuck the Mays "fireball" cylinder head on their 5.2 V12 and crowed about getting 16mpg out of it rather than 12.......
"why is it suddenly *news* when HP have such a machine for sale?"
Well, only a tiny percentage of the computing community cares about macs. El Reg are just reporting to the masses!
Simple if you just put some thought in to it.
G

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