HP Blends Performance, Aesthetics in Winning Workstation Formula - Test Drive
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HP sent over an xw6600 for a closer look. The unit came preconfigured with dual E5440 Xeon CPUs running at 2.83GHz, 8GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM, an Nvidia Quadro FX1700 graphics card, a Seagate 250GB 7200 RPM SATA (Serial ATA) hard drive, a 16X DVD+/-RW SuperMulti SATA drive and the usual complement of accessories. The xw6600 runs the Intel 5400 chip set and uses a rackable minitower case that is adorned with some pretty fancy graphics.
Right off the bat, one has to wonder if a minitower case is up to workstation duty. Here, HP has done its homework and effectively crammed all of the components into the case—still leaving room for ample airflow and easy servicing. HP earns a gold star for making something that is usually large into something that is no bigger than the typical desktop PC.
Cooling subsystems and active control of the fans keep everything within temperature specs and surprisingly quiet. In short, the xw6600 is smaller, quieter and faster than most competing workstations. Those who think size matters can always turn to the xw6600's big brothers, the xw8600 and the xw9400. As configured, the test unit sports a sticker price of around $4,500 and comes preconfigured with Windows Vista 64-Bit Business Edition.
We put the xw6600 through its paces and were rewarded with the fastest workstation test scores to date. Using the 64-bit version of the Performance test from PassMark Software, the xw6600 achieved a PassMark rating of 2892.6, a new high score for systems tested here. The Microsoft Windows Experience Index rated the system at 5.0 overall, the processor, memory and hard disk all scored 5.9, the gaming graphics scored a 5.3 and graphics scored a 5.0.
While $4,500 may be a bit pricey for most users, those willing to cough up the big bucks will love the xw6600's quality construction and impressive performance. HP partners will quickly fall in love with the xw6600's big sticker price, available options and multitude of configurations, not to mention the integration opportunities offered by selling high-performance workstations.
