Cadalyst - May 2008 - (Page 18)

cadalystlabsreview The Poly i780SLI3 earned two A+ grades: one for exceptionally good expandability options and the other for its five-year parts and three-year labor warranty. ation despite the extensive use of fans throughout. One very nice feature of the case was a top-mounted panel at the front that provided connections for an external SATA device, two USB 2.0 connectors, the system’s power and reset buttons, and both headphone and microphone connectors. These easily accessible connections are a real usability advantage that adds to the overall system design. In addition to the two USB 2.x connectors on the top front panel, the workstation had seven others for a total of nine USB 2.x connections on the system, as well as one FireWire connector. The case provided a total of 10 usable drive bays — four 5.25” externally accessible bays and one 3.5” externally accessible bay and an additional five 3.5” bays that are accessible internally. A beefy 700 W SPI power supply provided power for the system with room for growth. Combined with the availability of 3x PCIe x16, 2x PCI, and a single PCIe slot, the Poly i780SLI3 has exceptionally good expandability options, which earned the system the first of its two A+ grades. The system also included two 10,000 rpm SATA drives, a 150 GB Western Digital drive, and a 500 GB drive from Seagate. The included optical drive was a Lite-On 20x/52x drive. An all-in-one card reader and 3.5” diskette drive rounded out the drives for the system. Graphics were handled by an NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 drive with 512 MB of integrated onboard RAM. Although the motherboard was SLI capable, only a single graphics card was included in the review system, but this is yet another way the system can be expanded as desired. Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 was preinstalled, as were NVIDIA graphics drivers v.6.14.11.6919 dated November 30, 2007. On the test bench, I ran the Poly i780SLI3 system through its paces. With AutoCAD 2008 running the Cadalyst C2008 benchmark, the system generated a C2008 total index score of 252 with the native OpenGL drivers and 342 with the native Direct3D drivers. The combined C2008 total 18 index for the concurrent sessions using the Direct3D drivers was 647, which it completed in a total of 1 hour, 9 minutes. With the MAXBench4 benchmark running under Autodesk 3ds Max 2008, I first tested with the native OpenGL drivers and produced an averaged high/low score of 92.27. Using the native Direct3D drivers, the averaged high/low score was 219.41. As noted previously, tests with the accelerated 3ds Max drivers from NVIDIA were not conducted for this particular roundup. On the full SPECviewperf 10 benchmark, the Poly i70SLI3 system produced the following scores: 40.17 for 3dsmax-04, 50.35 for catia-02, 43.88 for ensight-03, 165.51 for maya-02, 48.59 for proe-04, 95.66 for sw-01, 26.24 for tcvis-01, and 28.24 for ugnx-01. Pricing for the Poly i780SLI3 as configured is $3,479. This price includes an exceptionally good warranty that covers three years for limited parts and five years for labor, but on-site coverage is optional. The optional warranty includes 24 to 48–hour coverage for replacement parts and 24hour telephone support. This very good warranty coverage earned the Poly i780SLI3 its second A+ grade. Polywell’s return policy is 30 days with a 15% restocking fee. The Poly i780SLI3 system shows off Polywell’s expertise in putting together high-quality systems for CAD, design, and digital-content creation (DCC) applications. With its expandability, good performance, and excellent warranty coverage, this workstation gets the work done now and offers room for growth as users’ needs evolve. ProMagix W160 HighPerformance Workstation PC In this roundup, the Velocity Micro ProMagix W160 High Performance Workstation PC was the only system to achieve Cadalyst’s Highly Recommended rating. Located in Richmond, Virginia, Velocity Micro produces a broad range of computer systems for a wide spectrum of needs, including systems for CAD, design, and DCC applications. The ProMagix W160 Cadalyst received was based on an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 rated at 2.66 GHz. The processor was overclocked to 3.6 GHz, a substantial amount for this processor, but I saw no problems whatsoever during the course of giving the system a workout on the benchmark tests. The processor was mounted on an EVGA 780i motherboard that uses the NVIDIA 780i chipset and features a front-side bus speed of 1,600 MHz. The system came with 4 GB of Corsair XMS2 DDR2800 RAM installed out of a possible 8 GB when the system is fully populated. The system included two SATA hard drives; a 10,000 rpm 150 GB Western Digital Raptor and a 500 GB 7,200 rpm Hitachi drive. Also included in the system was a Lite-On optical drive with speeds rated at 20x DVD+R, 24x CD-RW, and 48x CD-R. A 52-in-1 media reader completed the drive inventory for the ProMagix W160. Velocity Micro 800.303.7866 www.velocitymicro.com Price: $2,795 www.cadalyst.com cadalyst May 2008 http://www.velocitymicro.com http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - May 2008

Cadalyst - May 2008 Contents Editor's Window Cad Central A Solid Job in AutoCAD Today’s Power — Quad-Core Workstations Performance — Tomorrow’s Possibilities Reverse Engineering an Antique Italian Treasure Trends in Reverse Engineering NextEngine 3D Scanner — Reverse-Engineering Tool Setting CAD Standards Fight for Your Hardware Rights The Jack and Jill of Ergonomics Technology for Civil Infrastructure Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Shortcuts and Solutions

Cadalyst - May 2008

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