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HP xw4600 Workstation with LP3065 30 LCD Monitor (Cadalyst Labs Review)
1 Jun, 2008 By: Ron LaFonAn in-depth look at a quiet, powerful, and affordable workstation.
For this review, Cadalyst Labs evaluated a workstation/monitor combination for a longer period of time and in a significantly broader context than we normally do for workstation reviews. Cadalyst will evaluate only a few systems per year in this manner, with the purpose of using the systems for a variety of projects and gaining a deeper sense of how well they function in extended use. For this particular review, Hewlett-Packard sent a new HP xw4600 workstation with one of the company's LP3065 30" LCD monitors.
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Some characteristics — be they positive or negative — aren't immediately apparent when testing a system, but they do become apparent over time. Having a system for an extended period (in this case, three months) also provides the opportunity to test that system well beyond what Cadalyst normally does. During the course of this review, for example, I tested graphics cards, backup software, and large LCD monitors, all for reviews that either have appeared or will appear in Cadalyst. This extended use gave me much greater experience with the system.
Testing Procedures
When I initially received the system, I installed the most current versions of the software I use for testing, along with the Cadalyst benchmark testing software. In this case, the system was preloaded with Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2, as Cadalyst requested, and was configured with 2 GB of DDR2 800-MHz ECC RAM. Graphics were powered by an NVIDIA Quadro FX 1700 graphics card using NVIDIA drivers v.6.14.11.6252 (dated July 20, 2007).
For the first part of the benchmark tests, I ran the Cadalyst C2008 benchmark (available at www.cadalyst.com/c2008) under AutoCAD 2008 with Service Pack 1, which I used to test performance with both AutoCAD's native OpenGL drivers and Direct3D drivers. I tested the HP system at 1,280 x 1,024 resolution at 32-bit color depth. The Cadalyst C2008 benchmark adds two additional 3D tests — Hidden Shade and Flat Shade — and works with AutoCAD 2008 under both Windows XP and Vista. In addition to the single OpenGL and Direct3D tests, I also ran side-by-side simultaneous sessions of C2008 to make use of the additional microprocessor core. These two test times were combined to obtain a final result. Because AutoCAD is not yet multiprocessor aware, this procedure seems to be the best method currently for testing AutoCAD on multicore systems.
 The HP xw4600 workstation with the LP3065 display combines thoughtful engineering, good performance, and a moderate price. (Screen image courtesy of PTC) |
The second benchmark tested was MAXBench4 with Autodesk 3ds Max 2008, which I tested in two configurations: with the native OpenGL drivers and with the native Direct3D drivers. Ordinarily, I would test with the NVIDIA accelerated 3ds Max driver, MAXtreme, but when I tested the system, a version of MAXtreme that supported 3ds Max 2008 was not available.
The final benchmark test for the HP system was the full SPECviewperf 10 benchmark (www.spec.org), which works under both Windows XP and Vista. I've listed the scores for each of the component tests below in the performance evaluation section.
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