« 3D World Magazine »
· February 2008 ·

Computer manufacturers can’t be seen to be caught napping. Anyone building PCs must be ready to leap on the latest technologies and put them to work. This is exactly what Xworks has done here, updating its existing X20i-64 workstation to favour the latest release from AMD, the ATI FireGL V7600 graphics card (full review, page 96).

AMD has had a hard time matching Nvidia in the consumer graphics card market, but an R600 core used as a workstation engine is a different beast to its gaming-oriented counterpart, and proves its worth here. The X20i-64’s performance is strong across the board: while AMD was a little slow in releasing the 64-bit drivers for this card, we had no problems with compatibility or stability.

The card packs 512MB of GDDR4 RAM into its large two-slot frame, which is less than the 768MB of Nvidia’s Quadro FX 4600. This is not a fair comparison, though, as the V7600 is a more budget-conscious graphics solution, and that’s certainly a major factor in this configuration’s competitive pricing. If we were to have a criticism of the card, it would be that it erred on the noisy side when under full load, but documentation provided by Xworks indicates that our unit was an early test board, so this should be fixed in commercial machines. It’s a strong card that fills an obvious gap in both AMD’s line-up and, more importantly, the affordable professional graphics market.

Graphics aside, this specification is reminiscent of the machine that we looked at in issue 95’s group test, which had the same name. A highlight then, and still a positive point now, was the excellent processing offered by a pair of Intel Xeon X5355 processors. With a total of eight processing cores combined, each running at 2.67GHz and packing 4MB of L2 cache, these chips handle serious computation without breaking into a noisy sweat. This explains the healthy Cinebench 10 results, and one of the highest 3DMark06 CPU indexes we’ve seen.

Even better news is that Xworks will be offering free upgrades to the higher-performance E5430 processors in place of the X5355s as supplies become available. This core is married to a healthy 8GB of ECC DDR2 RAM running on a 667MHz bus, providing plenty of room for the 64-bit version of Windows XP Pro that comes pre-installed as standard.

Storage has had something of an upgrade from the previous machine too: the OS is held on a 150GB Western Digital drive that spins at 10,000rpm, while a 7,200rpm 750GB drive stores your data. Overall, this updated configuration of the X20i-64 is an impressive machine. The specification is excellent, the build quality is spot-on, yet somehow Xworks has managed to produce the X20i-64 at almost a thousand pounds less than some similarly performing peers.

VERDICT
PROS
•  Great CPU confi guration
•  Generous RAM
•  Excellent graphics performance

CONS
•  'Potentially' immature ATI drivers

SPECIFICATIONS 9
VALUE FOR MONEY 9
OVERALL 9

« MCAD Magazine »

Product :- Xworks X20i-64

Workstations don’t come much faster than XWorks’ new X20i-64 S-ATA. Featuring two top end Xeon processors, the machine is targeted at high-end CAD/CAM/CAE users, but with a 256MB ATI FireGL V7200 graphics card those who take design visualisation seriously will also take notice.

This is the first time we’ve managed to get our hands on Intel’s new 3.0GHz Xeon 5160 (Woodcrest) processor and from looking at the benchmark scores on page WS3 it doesn’t disappoint. For those who are not familiar with Intel’s new generation chip, don’t let the GHz fool you. A 3.0GHz 5160 Xeon is significantly more powerful than the Xeon 5000 Series (Dempsey), which runs at a maximum of 3.73GHz, and faster still than older generation ‘Netburst’ Xeons, which ran at speeds up to 3.8GHz. Simply speaking, the Xeon 5100 Series is much more efficient at processing per clock cycle than these other processors.

For the CAD/CAM/CAE user this means raw computational performance is taken to new levels - and when two Xeons are put alongside each other and all four cores put to work on multithreaded tasks like rendering in 3ds Max, the results are simply astounding!

"Workstations don’t come much faster than XWorks’ new X20i-64 S-ATA"

"Xworks has produced a workstation with the fastest computational performance we have ever seen"

In terms of graphics performance, the ATI FireGL V7200 gave a good account of itself under SolidWorks and Inventor, and took top honours in our 3ds Max test in DirectX mode. If you’re really serious about design visualisation however, XWorks also offers ATI’s FireGL V7350, which will give you a whopping 1GB memory of on-board memory. This will be of particularly interest to those running the latest versions of Max or Maya on Windows XP x64, where, system memory permitting, extremely large models can be manipulated with ease.

Our test machine shipped with 4 x 1GB DIMMS, leaving four slots free for expansion. And when 4GB DIMMs come down in price, XWorks will be able to offers you 32GB from the outset, filling all eight slots on the Intel S5000XVNSATA mainboard.

With some extremely quiet machines currently being produced some may be a little disappointed with XWorks’ dual Xeon. Though it’s far from loud, the machine produces a constant fan noise, which peaks during high loads.

In conclusion, Xworks has produced a workstation with the fastest computational performance we have ever seen. But costing £3,200, it’s certainly a specialist piece of kit which will appeal most to those who need to run multi-threaded or concurrent calculations on its four processor cores. Of course, Xworks also offers the same system with a single Xeon 5160, which will bring the price down considerably.

** You can configure your own Xworks' X20i-64 (Dual or Quad-Core) through our online configurator here **