The xw8600 is back with a performance boost, which does make a difference. Screen image courtesy of Autodesk Inc. © 2002-2007. All rights reserved.

When last you joined me, dear reader, we took a look at HP's xw8600 workstation, outfitted with Xeon 3.16 processors. The xw8600 is back with a performance boost in the form of X5482 quad core Xeon processors clocked at 3.20GHz, 1600MHz frontside bus and a Quadro FX 5600 with 1536MB RAM. And does that make a difference, you ask? Why, yes, it does.

Once again, this xw8600 system is ideal for broadcast and video editing, oil and gas exploration and 3D graphics creation, among other things. Can you say fast? I knew you could.

Configurable is Its Middle Name
Pricing for the xw8600 still starts at $1,926, while the system I tested includes two quad core Xeon X5482 processors clocked at 3.20GHz, a 1600MHz frontside bus (a boost from the 1333MHz of its predecessor), 4GB of RAM, a 160GB SATA hard drive and a Quadro FX 5600 video card with 1.5GB of memory, and costs $9,442. As with its previous incarnation, the new xw8600 can handle up to 128GB of memory, with the addition of RAM risers.

In case you missed my original xw8600 review, this system supports dual x16 video slots for a total of 16GB/s throughput -- 8GB/s in each direction. The increased video and memory bandwidth/capacity go a long way in eliminating bandwidth bottlenecks. The system also boasts 14 hard drive connections in total -- more than you can fit inside the case!

Eight processors happily at work. Courtesy of Bryan Hoff.

SpecViewPerf 9 Test Results
I ran the SpecViewPerf 9 benchmarking test on the new xw8600 to compare it with the 3.16GHz model and its Quadro FX 1700 card.

HP xw8600 3.16GHz
SUM_RESULTS3DSMAXSUMMARY.TXT
3dsmax-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 34.05

SUM_RESULTSCATIASUMMARY.TXT
catia-02 Weighted Geometric Mean = 39.31

SUM_RESULTSENSIGHTSUMMARY.TXT
ensight-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 38.73

SUM_RESULTSLIGHTSUMMARY.TXT
light-08 Weighted Geometric Mean = 35.93

SUM_RESULTSMAYASUMMARY.TXT
maya-02 Weighted Geometric Mean = 140.9

SUM_RESULTSPROESUMMARY.TXT
proe-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 34.44

SUM_RESULTSSWSUMMARY.TXT
sw-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 56.13

SUM_RESULTSTCVISSUMMARY.TXT
tcvis-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 23.39

SUM_RESULTSUGNXSUMMARY.TXT
ugnx-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 25.14