Test Center Daily | InfoWorld Staff » Review: Appro XtremeWorkstation mixes Opteron horsepower and superior graphics at a nice price

April 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Review: Appro XtremeWorkstation mixes Opteron horsepower and superior graphics at a nice price

TAGS: Workstations

In the old days, a workstation was an expensive Unix system running a RISC processor and proprietary graphics system, often with a price tag in the six-figure range. Today a workstation is typically a beefed-up desktop PC, and it might run Unix, Linux, or even Windows. The Appro XtremeWorkstation is typical of the new breed, supporting as many as four Opteron dual- or quad-core processors, as much as 128GB of RAM, an abundance of internal disk space, and dual 16x PCI-E slots for high-end graphics.

The system I received for testing was configured with four dual-core Opteron 8216 (2.4GHz) CPUs, 16 GB RAM, dual 120GB Seagate 10K RPM drives and an NVidia Quadro FX 4500 X2 graphics card. This system would be exceptional as a CAD, imaging, or video processing workstation. It would also be perfect for running multiple virtualized operating systems in a software development or testing environment, even with a less powerful graphics card.

The system is remarkably quiet for the horsepower it provides, and the case is heavy and well-built, with lots of room for expansion as well as good cooling. At $11,822 as tested, plus $2,950 for the FX 4500 X2, the system also delivers a whole lot of performance for the price. I tested the system with the supplied Red Hat Linux Enterprise Server 4.0 as well as with Windows XP Pro. Standard benchmark packages like Futuremark's PCMark and 3DMark are not intended for systems of this caliber -- they don't support the FX 4500 X2, and they aren't equipped to get results with eight cores. In fact, a 64-bit server OS (Red Hat Enterprise Server, Suse Linux Enterprise Server, Windows Server 2003) may be necessary to take full advantage of the large amounts of RAM and the eight or even 16 cores this system can provide.

The XtremeWorkstation could also be used as a server, of course, especially in branch office environments where rack mounting isn't necessary and noise levels are a factor. Running VMware or Xen, you should be able to host as many as 50 or 60 OS images running simultaneously. If you have applications that are optimized for multithreaded operations, they will fly with this system. While eight 2.4GHz cores are not the same thing as one 19.2GHz core, they're as close as you can get for now.

Appro XtremeWorkstation
Price: $14,772 as tested
Verdict: Considering the bang for the buck, the Appro XtremeWorkstation is hard to beat. For CPU- or RAM-intensive applications such as CAD, audio/video processing or rendering, or virtualization, where server hardware (redundant power supplies, redundant RAM, etc.) is not required, this system will serve well.

Posted by Logan Harbaugh on April 27, 2007 06:00 AM

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