Render time
Now it's time for the talent portion of our competition -- our trusty 3ds Max render tests.

The new system impressed me with its speedy bucket filling. It's nice to be entertained by buckets filling in rather than waiting for the next one to appear. As you can see by the results, I shaved more than three minutes off the render time for the Displacement & DOF file, and cut the Light Gallery scenes render time almost in half. I have to admit that seeing a result of less than one minute brought a smile to my face.

The xw8600 skinned.

Keeping Up with the Joneses
It seems that every 12-18 months we're faced with a choice: to upgrade or not to upgrade. With everything the xw8600 brings to the table, the choice seems a lot more clear-cut this time. From its 45 nm process to its fat pipes, and from the massive amount of memory it can handle to the choice of video card and operating system, not upgrading seems almost out of the question, assuming you've got the budget for it. For such a powerful beast, it's reasonably quiet. It's also an extremely expandable system with options to preload Linux, Windows XP or Vista in both 32 and 64-bit configurations.

One area where I was hoping to see a change is in case design, where a little modernization is in order. It's not that the case design is unattractive or old fashioned; it's just not as cutting edge as it could be. However, as I unpacked the system while mulling over this very subject, I noticed a different-looking workstation. HP had applied a case skin from hp.skinit.com, as shown above. If you can't get a redesigned case, skins are the next best thing. This one covers the entire workstation (front bezel, side panels and top), and costs $64.95. It also goes a long way in breathing new life into a case design that's a few years old, and it looks even better sitting on your desk.

Bryan Hoff is a multifaceted artist and writer. A web designer, digital artist and animator, his credits include movie and television effects, online games, 3D corporate animation, Flash and traditional website design. His writing credits include articles for LinuxWorld, Element K Journals and InformIT, covering topics like Photoshop effects, Linux 3D graphics applications, Web and HTML design, RSS feeds and painting with a graphics tablet. Hoff has written ebooks on blogging and website creation for beginners and co-authored the book Moving from Windows to Linux.