Product Reviews

With all the action surrounding Intel's Pentium 4 and Pentium-M processors, things have been a little quiet as far as server and high-end workstation CPUs are concerned. But Boston has bucked the Pentium 4 trend and sent us a dual-processor workstation in the form of the 7033TR.

The processors in question are a pair of 3.06GHz Xeons. These are currently the highest-end workstation variants, with Hyper-Threading capability, a 533MHz FSB (front side bus) and 512KB of Level 2 cache. The processors are mounted in SuperMicro's new X5DAL-TG2 motherboard, sporting Intel's E7505 chipset. However, with the 533MHz FSB allied to a 266MHz dual-channel DDR memory bus, maximum memory bandwidth across E7505's MCH (memory controller hub) is limited to 4.3GB/sec, in comparison to the 875P chipset's theoretical maximum of 6.4GB/sec. Consequently, we're now faced with the peculiar situation of Xeons - traditionally Intel's premium 32-bit processor - being at a disadvantage in comparison to the newer, ostensibly consumer-orientated Pentium 4C with its 800MHz system bus and 400MHz DDR memory.

But that hasn't stopped Boston putting together a serious workstation. The motherboard is equipped with dual Gigabit Ethernet, and the twin Xeons are joined by 2GB of Corsair PC2100 Registered ECC DDR RAM in the form of four 512MB modules. In addition, one of the motherboard's 64-bit PCI slots is occupied by an ICP Vortex Zero Channel Serial ATA RAID controller. This is put to good use with three 36GB Western Digital xxx 10,000rpm Serial ATA drives in a RAID-0 configuration. The drives themselves sit in the cage of a SuperMicro 733 case, which is specifically designed for Serial ATA RAID arrays of up to four disks, with hot-swap capability via front-fascia pull-out drive caddies.

A bulky Gainward U1000 graphics card, a GeForce FX 5800 Ultra model, sits astride the AGP and one of the two

The other 32-bit slot is occupied by a Gainward xxx audio card, compensating for the lack of an in-built audio chipset on the motherboard. The sound card drives a set of VideoLogic ZXR-550 5.1 speakers - a solid but unspectacular choice. It's also worth noting that the audio card sports a separate set of S/PDIF digital-in/out connectors on a PCI blanking plate, meaning that the motherboard's free 100MHz 64-bit PCI slot is unusable as supplied: this leaves the machine with no spare PCI slots.

It may lose out on internal expansion, but if PCs were judged solely by their build quality, Boston would be running off with most of the awards. The 7033TR is beautifully put together, with all wiring routed as neatly as possible. The benefits of Serial ATA's thin cabling hasn't been squandered elsewhere, with the usual flat parallel IDE and floppy cables being replaced with high-quality Coolermaster rounded types. This isn't just good from an aesthetic point of view but from a cooling perspective too: three high-speed hard disks and two 3.06GHz Xeon processors, plus the hot-running graphics card, mean maximum airflow is imperative.

The 7033TR's scores in our application-based benchmarks reflect the fact that the latest-generation Pentium 4C/875P chipset combination has caught up with the Xeon platform. It returned a solid but unspectacular 1.61, a result eclipsed by Pentium 4 and AMD desktop machines of late. But you don't buy a dual-Xeon machine to run Word, and letting the 7033TR loose on our multithreaded LightWave 3D rendering benchmark - more representative of the use to which a machine like this will be put - saw the Xeon's raw processing power pulling in a completion time of eight minutes 12 seconds, the fastest result we've ever seen.

With consumer-level products now performing at such phenomenal speeds - witness the presence of a consumer graphics card in this very machine - it's becoming difficult to justify the price premium on systems like this. But, with the continued artificial non-existence of a dual Pentium 4 platform, the Xeon remains the only choice for those who need multiprocessing and remain shy of AMD's dual-CPU offerings. You'll know if you need a system like this, and if you do, the Boston can certainly deliver the goods.