The newly refined xw4600 workstation. Courtesy of HP.

I noticed two things about HP's xw4600 the moment I took it out of the box. The first was that it weighs much less than my xw9300. The second is the cool case redesign. At first boot, I noticed two more things: it's fast and it's quiet. While the xw9300 is happy to sit and show me the BIOS screen for upwards of a minute, the 4600 gets on with the show in mere seconds. Where have you been all my life? Apparently, in the minds of engineers at HP and Intel. But now their brainchild is your affordable animation and vfx workstation.

The xw4600 brings choice to the table, and is ideal for 3D artists in the animation and visual effects fields, as well as CAD and DCC. So what sets this system apart from the rest? For starters, the brand new Intel 65nm four core processor and Intel X38 Express chipset. It also boasts an 80 PLUS efficient, which is a prerequisite for Energy Star 4.0. Last, but certainly not least, is the selection of video cards you have to choose from, including NVIDIA Quadro FX and ATI FireGL.

Pricing and Configuration
The system I reviewed was configured with a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Quad Q6700 processor, NVIDIA Quadro FX 1700 video card with 51MB RAM, 2GB DDR2-800 ECC RAM, 250GB SATA2 hard drive loaded with Windows XP Professional (Vista and Linux also available) and a DVD-RW drive, with a retail price of $3,772.

Testing, 1, 2, 3 (4)
To put the system through its paces, I decided to run SpecViewPerf and to check the render times for a couple of my favorite 3ds Max files, as well as working with some character rigs and particle and physics effects. What I discovered is that there are definite advantages to having four cores on one die, and that NVIDIA's new Quadro FX cards run circles around the older ones.

HP xw4600
SUM_RESULTS3DSMAXSUMMARY.TXT
3dsmax-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 32.33

SUM_RESULTSCATIASUMMARY.TXT
catia-02 Weighted Geometric Mean = 37.76

SUM_RESULTSENSIGHTSUMMARY.TXT
ensight-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 25.20

SUM_RESULTSLIGHTSUMMARY.TXT
light-08 Weighted Geometric Mean = 34.58

SUM_RESULTSMAYASUMMARY.TXT
maya-02 Weighted Geometric Mean = 60.00

SUM_RESULTSPROESUMMARY.TXT
proe-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 33.74

SUM_RESULTSSWSUMMARY.TXT
sw-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 39.95

SUM_RESULTSTCVISSUMMARY.TXT
tcvis-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 13.51

SUM_RESULTSUGNXSUMMARY.TXT
ugnx-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 12.39