Filed under: Desktops

C’mon, who here doesn’t want their very own supercomputer to do, um, whatever they want with? In an effort to make sure every man, woman and child has an absurdly powerful number cruncher in their home (let’s go with OSPP, or One Supercomputer Per Person), Microsoft has tag-teamed with the fabled Cray in order to “drive high productivity computing into the mainstream.” The Cray CX1 Supercomputer comes loaded with Windows HPC Server 2008 and incorporates up to 8 nodes and 16 Intel Xeon CPUs (dual- or quad-core); additionally, it boasts up to 4TB of internal storage, 64GB of memory per node and interoperates nicely with Linux. The CX1 is said to be the most affordable supercomputer offered by Cray (not to mention the “world’s highest-performing computer that uses standard office power”), but it’ll still run you anywhere between $25,000 to well over $60,000. Chump change, right?

[Via NetworkWorld]

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Filed under: Laptops

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Intel’s had its new processor plans slipped out to the public thanks to Sun, according to DailyTech. Details on the 6-core (!) Xeon Dunnington, as well as the kinda-sorta hush-hush Nehalem were apparently leaked out onto Sun’s public web server over the weekend, including plans for the new Xeons to overtake the company’s Tigerton CPU line. The Dunnington processors will have a 16MB L3 cache shared by all six cores, and will be pin-compatible with the Tigertons, thus making integration with your Clarksboro chipset slightly less painful… by being possible. The Nehalem also got the spy treatment, with news that it will not only replace the Penryn line in Q4 ‘08, but will also be the first time in 18 years that Intel includes on-die memory controllers. If this sort of thing is important to you (and we think it may be) hit the read link and get all the juicy details.

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Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

Intel seems like it’s going to be making a bigger push at gamers with the launch of Penryn, and HotHardware managed to score some deets on the company’s upcoming “Skulltrail” platform, which is built-around server-class hardware reconfigured for gaming. The new mobo pictured here supports dual quad-core Penryn Xeon processors, SLI graphics, and four PCI Express x16 slots, as well as two standard PCI slots. You’re also looking at a whopping six internal SATA ports, dual eSATA ports, six USB ports, a lone FireWire port, and Gigabit Ethernet. That’s quite a foundation for a gaming rig — let’s just hope pricing is at least pretend reasonable, eh?

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Filed under: Desktops

When a regular consumer desktop just won’t serve your demanding computing needs, it’s time to go workstation, and Dell’s got a pair of new quad-core-packin’ models that are spec’ed to be some of the fastest on the planet. Both the Precision T7400 and T5400 are available with either one or two of Intel’s newest 45-nanometer Xeon Processors (up to a 3.20GHz X5482 on the 7400), as many as two 1.5GB nVIDIA Quadro FX5600 graphics cards (capable of driving four 30-inch monitors), up to 4GB of RAM (with a whopping 128GB promised using a memory riser card chassis when 8GB DIMMs become available) and either three (5400) or five (7400) hard drives for up to 3TB of storage — all topped off with a little Blu-ray action. Available immediately, the new rigs start at just $1,600 and $1,850, but for a configuration that meets your ridiculous specifications, expect to shell out well north of ten grand.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops

Right on schedule, we’ve got 16 new server and high-end desktop processors based on Intel’s new 45nm manufacturing and Penryn architecture. The procs all deliver more power from jess juice while eliminating lead for a more eco-friendly impact over time. The QX9650 desktop proc receives the spotlight, again, as does the “world-record” setting performance of a 3.2GHz quad-core Xeon 5400 “Stoakley” proc with a 1600MHz front side bus and 12MB cache. Right, the same chip that Apple’s rumored to be waiting on for their Mac Pro update. At least some of the new processors will be available today inside pre-built systems — the rest will arrive within the next 45 days. Bulk pricing begins at $177 for the 1.86Ghz dual-core Xenon on up to $1,279 for the 3.2GHz quad-core mother.

[Via Electronista]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops

Although HP’s beastly xw8600 / xw6600 machines don’t yet have a definitive ship date, it’s looking like the duo will indeed be sporting a couple of Intel’s forthcoming Penryn chips. Judging by the specifications list on HP’s website, each workstation can be equipped with two of many Xeon 5200 (dual-core) or Xeon 5400 (quad-core) processors ranging from 1.86GHz to 3.33GHz. Additionally, the xw6600 features up to 32GB of DDR2 RAM, an internal DVD burner, a number of PCI / PCIe slots, seven USB 2.0 ports, FireWire, audio in / out, gigabit Ethernet, your choice of NVIDIA Quadro / ATI FireGL graphics cards and a 650-watt power supply to boot. As for the xw8600, it steps things up by supporting as much as 128GB of DDR2 RAM, making room for a few more 3.5- / 5.25-inch drives and PCI cards, and throwing in a more robust PSU. Not surprisingly, there are no pricing details available at the moment, but if we were bent over a barrel and forced to guess when we’d know more, we’d shoot for November 12th.

[Via Electronista]
Read - HP’s xw6600
Read - HP’s xw8600

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!