HP xw4200: First Look

After transferring my files and installing some of the more important software applications this past weekend, I finally had the chance to put my new HP workstation through it's paces. My review will be a two part series focusing on two areas- design and performance.

Out of the box, the first thing that struck me was how thin the HP was compared to my previous Antec enclosure.


I'll miss the electric blue LED and Piano Black finish of my Antec.

The slim form factor is mentioned as a highlight in their product literature, and I certainly agree. It's nice to see computers grow smaller after each generation. The overall weight is significantly less too. The low height fits easily inside my Ikea computer desk without modifications and there is plenty of room on either side to store my Wacom tablet.

The outer enclosure is constructed out of steel with a textured matte finish and the front sports an industrial looking black plastic bezel. There is a ridge on the top part of the bezel that I thought worked nicely as a handle for moving the workstation around but later discovered this warning in their support manual:


Oops! Guess I was accustomed to the ease of my Power Mac.

The back of the case is pretty standard stuff.



Notice the analog VGA connection for the graphics card- I certainly did. Arrg! My all digital video interface solution alludes me! In case you were wondering, yes my card is in fact an ATI Radeon X300 SE- the lowest card on ATI's PCIe's totem pole. But more on that later.

So let's take a peak inside. I especially liked the fact that HP offers such a robust, tool-less design. The access panel is easily opened with a handle on the door and everything from system memory and expansion cards to floppy, hard and optical drives can be serviced or replaced with no tools at all.


Reminds me of the PC comparison photo on Apple's Power Mac G5 page.

The first thing I noticed on opening the case was a CPU heatsink that uses a new copper heatpipe design. According to HP, this design was used to allow the fans to run slower and help reduce system noise.


Copper heatsink manufactured by Foxconn.

If I were ever to remove the heatsink in the future (to upgrade my CPU for instance) there is a special setup in the BIOS that I need to run for five minutes. This action warms the thermal goo/grease between the processor and heatsink so it can more easily be broken.


Here's what the world's first 0.11-micron graphics processor card looks like using the PCI Express interface. This baby is so cutting edge it doesn't require a fan. ;)

Not everything in HP land is a bed of roses however. Here are a few thorns to pick at.

The stubborn continuation of legacy parallel/serial/PS2 connections. Note to HP: With the dominance of USB and FireWire peripherals, there isn't a need for the older connections anymore- at least not on the high end workstations. Get rid of them. And while you're at it, how about integrating FireWire on the motherboard? I don't want to pay an extra $50 and use up a PCI slot just for this functionality. ABIT, ASUS, and Tyan are all integrating IEEE 1394 into their motherboards using the same Intel 925X chipset.

The optical drive -in my case a 8x DVD+RW drive is an older generation product being offered in a next generation workstation. HP should have bundled their workstations with at least the $100 dvd530i which features double-layer recording technology. This is pretty standard nowadays. Their upcoming dvd630 drives promise even faster performance in addition to +/- compatibility.

My optical scroll mouse is just your basic Logitech wheel mouse with the HP logo silk-screened onto it. I knew it wouldn't be anything fancy but I immediately missed my former InteliMouse Explorer with the extra thumb buttons for quick navigation of web pages. Looks like I'll be keeping the Micosoft mouse instead of selling it with the rest of my older system. I do love the look and feel of my keyboard though. Keys are much quieter compared to my older Microsoft board.

That's about it as far as criticisms of the design go. I didn't talk about the one design feature that had me the most surprised though. That's the system noise or I should say the lack of it. This is one amazingly silent workstation! If I had to rate the last last two PC enclosures I owned with this one on a scale of 1-10: ten being jetliner loud, I'll say the Atacom case was a 9, the Antec a 4 and the HP a 0.1. The loudest component is the Seagate Barracuda 7200 hard drive when it's being written on but if I'm working in RAM it's completely silent. Hat's off to you on that one HP.

Well next post will be on the performance. I promise no bar graphs or pie charts on this one, just my thoughts and observations.

Paper Launches

As I was walking the eisles of BestBuy today, I happened to noticed that they had NVIDIA GeForce 6800 cards on the shelf. Finally the 6800's are shipping in large enough quantities to hit mass market retail shelves. Up until now, BestBuy only had the long in tooth GeForce 5xxx series available. So why do I bring this up? Well because I'm tired of the commonly known business practice called "Paper Launching".


Launching some paper...

NVIDIA officially announced the GeForce 6800 card way back on April 14th, 2004. According to their press release, they promised the cards were already currently shipping to their partners and that retail boards would appear within 45 days. When I attended the E3 Expo in mid May, the cards still were not out yet so I asked the employee at the NVIDIA booth when they should be expected. Her answer was a simple, "within a few weeks". Well a long 5 months later, they actually are out now. Even Apple is shipping the G5 Power Mac version of these cards to their customers who ordered them for the 30" Cinema Displays back in June.

This "paper launching" practice is by no means limited to NVIDIA. ATI is just as guilty of it as well. Their top of the line RADEON X800 XT Platinum Edition has just started shipping after being announced back on May 4th, 2004. The delay between the product's announced date and the actual date you can walk into a retail store and pick one up seems to be getting longer all the time. This is probably the reason why both ATI and NVIDIA have announced that they will not be introducting new video cards every six months like they used to.

This problem is not unique to video card manufactures by any means as both Intel and AMD are guilty of it as well. I'm not against pre-anouncing products ahead of time, its just that the companies that do it seem to have gotten out of hand regarding when they announce their products to the time it get's released in mass quantities that the pre-announcement date has become practically meaningless.

HP xw4200 arrives!

As expected, my new HP workstation and 1GB of Kingston memory came in yesterday at around the same time. I will post my full review over the weekend but for now I'll just say that I it's great, even if it's not a Mac!

Memory mayhem.

While I was pricing DDR-2 memory with several online retailers last week, I discovered some naming inconsistencies that had me scratching my head for a while.

Since HP specifies DDR-2 PC2-4300 (533 MHz) as the highest speed of memory when configuring the xw4200, I used this as my search criteria. My first stop was Crucial.com. What I quickly discovered on their memory upgrades store page is that they don't offer PC2-4300 memory but instead sell PC2-4200 memory. Hmm, is 4200 a slower speed of memory than 4300? Is it something less than 533 MHz? I pressed further. At the bottom of Crucial's informative DDR2 page, they switch back to a naming convention of PC2-4300 to describe 533 MHz memory. Even Micron, Crucial's parent company describes DDR-2 533 memory as PC2-4300.

So which is it? 4200 or 4300? Or are they two separate speeds that deserve different names? My answers were found by coming across this excellent article from Legit Reviews titled, Behind the Scenes: DDR2 by Nathan Kirsch. Conclusion? They are the exact same memory speeds, just a thoughtless result of company marketers who played with the naming conventions by either rounding up or down to make their modules look better than the competition! Arrg.

Needless to say, in the end I purchased Kingston memory. ZipZoomFly offered it for a bit less than Crucial and I bought a 1GB kit of DDR2-533 PC2-4200 for $262. I should receive it around the same time as my HP shipment.

Halo 2 Gone Gold

Yes Master Chief, we haven't forgot about you!

In my quest to build the ultimate PC so I can play Half Life 2 and Doom 3 I almost forgot about another premier title coming out, Halo 2 for the Xbox. It turns out that it went "gold" today which means Bungie completed the game and shipped it to its publisher Microsoft for manufacturing and distribution. Actually Microsoft uses Technicolor for these services and Halo 2 most likely is already in our Premastering department at Camarillo getting worked on. From there is goes to our Mastering area where they create the DVD master which then gets sent to our manufacturing department. Because this is a premier Xbox title where Microsoft can anticipate enormous sales, it most likely will be manufactured at our Guadalajara plant in Mexico where they have the capability of mass producing thousands of DVD's on a daily basis. After that it would get shipped to our distribution hub in Memphis, TN where its finally sent to all the Walmart's, CompUSA's and BestBuy's across the country.

The US release date is November 9th, so we only have less than 30 days before we can get our hands on it. I remember having a blast playing co-op with Rob when he would drive down on the weekends and help me destroy the "flood". I hope he can make it at least a few more times for round two. By the way, I had to check Bungie's RumorBuster web page just to make sure it had co-op.

Computer Tech: Part I - Displays

Remember the good old days of computing? Back then you knew that a 486 computer was faster than a 386, at any given clock speed. A VESA Local Bus video card was faster than ISA based one. 8MB of RAM was way better than 4MB of system RAM. Nowadays things aren't so clear. This is the first blog of a multipart series where I compare the technology of today vs. the tech of the next generation. Although it may seem like a no brainer to go with the next big thing, the decision to go with the latest and greatest in the computer world isn't so clear anymore. In this series I will try to explain the technical differences and what shortcomings, if any, the next gen tech entails. I will also provide my personal recommendation for my next gaming rig and the reasons why I choose to go with that particular product.

Today, I'm going to talk about displays. For many years dating back to the dawn for modern computing CRT displays have ruled the roost. It wasn't until recently that LCD's have gained momentum and are on track to eventually replace all CRT's, especially on new systems. The benefits of modern LCD's are numerous; they have excellent brightness and contrast. The color representation is consistent and does not shift based on magnetic orientation. It uses much less power to operate and uses much less desk space than its CRT counterparts. Since an LCD's pixels are always on, they don't need to be refreshed as often as a CRT and therefore are easier on the eyes.

Despite all the benefits of LCD displays they do have some negative attributes. One is price. Although prices of LCD's have dropped dramatically over the years and will continue to do so, they still cost more than double what CRT's cost with similar specs. Another negative of an LCD display is that only have one native resolution. You can set your screen resolution to lower what is recommended but the pixels are interpolated and can make the display look fuzzy. Some of the higher end LCD's do a much better job of this than lower end one's but the effect is still noticeable. Lastly, unless you purchase a good quality LCD with a fast pixel refresh rate (less than 20ms is ideal) then you may experince ghosting artifacts with fast moving games (such as first person shooters) and watching videos.

Since my goal for building my next PC was to keep costs low and to only play games on it, I decided to purchase a used CRT. I ended up buying a 19" Dell P992 CRT display on eBay for only $85. It features the award winning Sony Trinitron flat glass tube and can support a resolution of up to 1600 x 1200. Another reason why I went with a CRT is that since I am only using this for games, the ability to switch resolutions without losing quality is important. This will allow me to lower the resolution as games get more graphically demanding without seeing blurred pixels. Also I will never have to worry about ghosting artifacts when playing Doom 3.


Dell P992 Display


It is a really stylish display, the only problem is that it really is a deep monitor and takes up a lot of room on my desk. Also don't get me wrong, I still own and love my Apple Cinema Display, its just for this particlar purchase, a CRT made more sense. I look forward to playing some really great gaming titles on it.

Mystery solved!

Many thanks to Mark for solving the mystery of my non-descript ATI Entry 2D 64MB PCI-E graphics card last night which comes as the least expensive option on the HP xw4200. After delving into the release notes of the graphics driver, he discovered that it's an ATI Radeon X300.



Interesting that HP downplays this card by describing it as 2D only while the other graphics card options have their respective 3D chipsets clearly labeled. Make no mistake about it, this is a fully functional, Direct X 9 based, 3D graphics card with a genuine GPU.

My biggest fear previously was that I wouldn't be able to do any type of 3D work or gaming on my new system until I upgraded the graphics. Now after looking at the specs, it looks like the X300 is at least as capable- and in some ways surpasses- the feature set of my current 64MB GeForce3 Ti200.

Even though this is ATI's most entry level PCI Express based card, it does have something unique that I can brag about. It is the industry’s first graphics processor built using the advanced 110-nanometer silicon process. 130-nanometer? Pfft! How big and bulky! ;)

I'll be looking forward to putting this card through its paces and will let you know how it performs. I feel much better now that I can relax and patiently wait for Nvidia to eventually release a true high-end PCIe card.

An offer I couldn't refuse.

As mentioned in my last post, after a considerable amount of research I decided to purchase a workstation from HP.

Just to give you some reference, in June of this year HP announced their new line of workstations- the xw4200, xw6200 and xw8200. This lineup offers a number of impressive new technologies that include an Intel 925X Express chipset using the Pentium 4 "Prescott" CPU for the base model and an Intel E7525 chipset with Xeon "Nocona" processors for the higher-end models. All models use the new PCI Express x16 graphics and DDR-2 memory interfaces.


The xw4200, xw6200 and xw8200 Workstations from HP.

Since upgrading my PC wasn't absolutely essential, I was only window shopping HP's website on a periodic basis. Just occasionally looking to see what special deals were being offered, mind you. Then I discovered a hot deal on their Specials and Promotions page that I simply couldn't pass up. For a limited time, HP was offering free upgrades towards the exact entry-level workstation I was eyeing-the xw4200! This fit perfectly into my plan to purchase the xw4200 at it's most minimum configuration and upgrade the high markup components using other online resellers. By taking advantage of this promotion there would be two less components to worry about. Cool. But it got better. The deal was sweetened with a $75 instant rebate and free shipping. Done deal!

So here are the specifications on my xw4200:

HP Workstation xw4200
MS Windows XP Professional US
HP xw4200 Localization Kit US
2.80GHz/1MB P4 800FSB
128MB (1x128MB) DDR2-400 non-ECC
ATI Entry 2D 64MB PCI-E
160GB SATA/150 7200 (1st) - Free Upgrade from 40GB SATA/150
8X DVD+RW - Free Upgrade from 48X CD-ROM
No Floppy Disk Drive Kit
HP PS/2 Standard Keyboard US
USB Optical 3-Button Mouse
Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 2004 US
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sub Total: 874.00
Freight: .00
Estimated Tax: 72.11
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Order Total: 946.11

Aside from the promotional upgrade of the hard and optical drives, this is as basic as it comes from HP. I did splurge an extra $5 on the optical scroll mouse. ;) I didn't want to spend the extra $10 for a USB keyboard so I left it as is.

So what parts do I plan on upgrading? Well the anemic amount of RAM is my main concern right now. At the time I ordered the workstation, the sales rep informed me that Windows XP would perform much better with at least 256MB. I couldn't have agreed more but politely said "no thanks". In fact I was surprised to find out that XP is even able to run with as little as 64MB, much less 128MB. I will probably purchase 1GB of DDR-2 533 RAM from Crucial for now, and another 1GB later.

My second major concern is the graphics card. I couldn't find any information from ATI about HP's ATI 2D only PCI Express graphics card. Could a manufacturer today really produce a video card without a GPU? I suppose so, but this really bites if true as I won't be able to do any 3D work or gaming until I can purchase a real 3D card. The current lack of a high end Nvidia based gaming card using the PCI Express interface is worthy of its own posting (which Mark might touch on at a later time). If I become really impatient or desperate, I could always purchase a GeForce 6600 based card.

Lastly there is the processor. While I'm not entirely thrilled to purchase a system with a clock speed of less than 3 GHz, I can always upgrade at a later time. In the meantime 2.8 should be noticeably faster than my current 1.9. Also, the new socket design of my motherboard should help minimize any potential incompatibility with future processor releases from Intel.

Overall I believe I made a great choice with HP. Their workstations use toolless, convertible mimitower form factors, utilize low acoustic technologies and wrap them up in slender, black and metallic enclosures. It's no Power Mac G5, but the looks say all business (finally no more beige!) without the needless flash. Don't forget that all of this includes a 3/3/3 (parts/labor/next business day on-site) limited warranty with top notch service. According to UPS my xw4200 shipped on October 7th and should arrive by October 13th. Check back later for a full review.

Doom 3 for Linux

Why so angry?... Perhaps because there is no OS X port of Doom 3?

I must have been asleep at the Internet wheel because I missed this one. The Linux binaries for Doom 3 was released a few days ago. This means that the only thing left to work on is the OS X port, which really was supposed to have been released before the Linux version. I have to wonder when id plans to release the Mac version.

One interesting note is that the readme file mentions that it will not work with ATI video cards until ATI releases new Linux drivers. Score one for NVIDIA.

The one gleam of hope I have is that id Software was able to make the Linux version more hardware efficient than the Windows platform. Only a 1 GHz P3 processor is the minimum requirement. Hopefully they can work the same magic with the OS X version... if it ever gets released.

It's a mod, mod world.

I've decided to upgrade my PC again.

Normally I would be perfectly happy with my current system which was last upgraded in January of 2002. It has an Intel Pentium IV 1.9Ghz processor with 400MHz system bus, 1GB of 800MHz RDRAM, a 200MB 7200RPM hard drive and a 64 MB VisionTek GeForce 3 Ti video card. I know this is not cutting edge anymore but as a rule of thumb, I really don't like upgrading until technology is 2-4 times faster than what I have currently.

But a few things happened within the last few months that made me decide on upgrading sooner rather then later. First my 19" Sony CRT monitor blew out in June. As previously detailed on the Rusty Apple site, I replaced it with a HP 23" LCD. Then id Software's highly anticipated Doom 3 was released. Playable on my computer? Yes, but at the absolute lowest settings and resolution. So I figured after nearly 3 years maybe it was OK to upgrade.

So what happened to switching over to Apple?


Eating crow? There's actually a recipe for this.

Well after dropping some serious cash for the HP display in the beginning of June, Apple announced their new Cinema Displays later that month at WWDC 2004. Being an avid Mac rumor reader, I was expecting Apple to announce this but I never really considered purchasing an Apple display for my PC because the reported new aluminum designs wouldn't cosmetically match my black Antec case and I thought they would continue to use their proprietary ADC connections. I also didn't plan on purchasing a new Power Mac/Cinema Display until much later next year. What I didn't expect were two things- that Apple would announce industry standard DVI interfaces for their displays and that 3D software developer Alias would announce Maya Unlimited for the Mac. Gaming and Maya was what always made me comfortable investing and living in the Windows world.

Well at this point I made my "switching over forever" statement and tried to return or sell my HP display. After trying for half a day I found out that returning was impossible and selling meant losing hundreds of dollars in the process. Why not keep it and use it with a future Power Mac? Well I could but then I have two mismatched components again. (Apple does have features that better integrate their displays to their desktops also.) Call me vain but I just want the total package!

So this is where I started my research all over again. My first choice was obviously HP (for a matching case design) with their new xw workstations. I quickly found out they charge a huge premium for everything! CPUs, RAM, hard drives, optical drives, video cards- everything could be bought separately online for much less. So I explored other possibilities including upgrading my existing system with the parts I needed, including a better matching case. What a surprise to discover a couple of things-

1. The difficulty in finding an attractive, well designed case.
2. The growing popularity of custom case modding.

Beauty contest. From left to right-Dell Precision 670, IBM IntelliStation M Pro, Apple Power Mac G5, HP xw8200 and the 3DBOXX Workstation.

Shown above are the enclosure designs of most of the major workstation manufacturers. Obviously Apple leads the way in industrial design while the other PC manufactures either play it safe (HP, Dell) or are downright ugly (IBM, BOXX).

I actually love the company philosophy and product flexibility of Boxx. They really seem to understand the requirements and demands of 3D artists by offering great advice and a multitude of component choices including 64-bit AMD Opteron processors which most of the other manufactures don't. What I dislike though is their case designs, both inside and out. Looks like an unorganized rat's nest of cabling inside and the outside reminds me of a project coming out of a high school machine shop class. Oh well, I still have faith they can wake up and turn it around-hopefully sooner rather than later.

Running the numbers on all the workstation providers I could think of, I came to this conclusion: either purchase my dual processor dream system for thousands of dollars (might as well have bought a Mac!) or start making some compromises. This included the possibility of rebuilding my own system through Pricewatch and DealTime as well as using "boutique" vendors such as GamePC.

I won't rehash the various PC case manufacture's that Mark detailed in his last blog but rather give you my opinion of them. I think 95% of the cases out there are boring at best and hideous at worst. I believe Mark made a great choice with his Lian Li design although I'm not a huge fan of doors- my Antec has one and most of the time it's open. (I prefer direct access to my drives.) I think the Lian Li case looks great without it though-very minimal and classic.

After weeding through all the choices I had at my disposal-case designs, motherboards, CPUs, and so forth I had a change of heart about corporate PC manufacturers. I guess I was a little turned off with the lack of system integration and well made designs by custom building my own PC. See below for an exaggerated example.


The cardboard and electrical taped fan on top makes a nice touch.

So what I decided to do was both -that is to purchase the lowest priced HP workstation and replace any parts that were "inferior" with much faster and less expensive components bought online. The best of both worlds. My next update will give more details on what HP model I bought and what I plan to do with it in regards to upgrades.

While I would never want one of these displayed in my residence, I am amazed on how much time and effort people put into custom case mods. As a bonus, here are a few for your enjoyment.


Cases available for retail. The Diabolic Minotaur (L) and the Thermaltake Xaser V Damier (R).


Custom cases by basement artists. See how the one on the right was made here.

Mac Disk Utilities

Everybody with a computer should know that hard disk maintenance is essential, regardless if you have a Windows or Mac based PC. The most common disk problem by far is the fragmentation of files on your hard disk. The more you install and delete applications\files, the greater your hard drive can become fragmented. The effects of severe fragmentation is reduced computer performance as your OS struggles to read and write files from different areas of the disk. The solution to this problem is to periodically run a disk defragmenter application. Although Windows comes with a free defrag utility, OS X does not and therefore it is necessary to purchase a third party application. Some of the more popular disk utilities for OS X are Alsoft DiskWarrior, Micromat Drive 10, and Speed Disk which comes with Symantec 's Norton Utilities 8.0 for Macintosh. In addition to degfragmenting hard drives, these utilities also come with other functions like UNIX permission repairs and scan disk checking.

There is a major problem with these utilities though as they only work with specific versions of OS X and specific models of Mac's. Most of the time the latest and greatest version of OS X or Mac will render the utility useless. With Apple on an aggressive schedule of releasing operating systems, and with new hardware being introduced you may be stuck waiting for these companies to come out with compatible software.

Recently I needed to defrag my hard drive as I wanted to capture DV video using Final Cut Pro and therefore needed a clean contiguous disk so I wouldn't drop any frames. I had a copy of Norton utilities 8.0 for the Mac so I tried using SpeedDisk but it complained that it couldn't defrag any of my system files unless I booted from the CD. I popped in the CD restarted my Mac holding down the C key as the computer booted up. It caused my G5 to turn on all its fans full blast while a grey screen appeared. After waiting about 15 mins I realized that this CD was never going to boot so I went online looking for some help. I came across this support article from Symantec. Basically it says that I needed a new CD (version 8.0.2) in order for Norton utilities to recognize my new G5. Symantec wasn't very clear about it but they appear to charge for this CD unless you just recently bought the older version. Even then there is another article which talks about waiting up to 20 mins for the CD to boot with these new models. Not very efficient if you ask me.

Symantec's workaround for this problem is to connect a second Macintosh to the first using FireWire's Target Disk Mode. Since my iMac G3 is very portable, I was able to do this, however moving my iMac next to my G5 every time my disk needs defragging is very inefficient to say the least. The final straw for Symantec was when I found out they are discontinuing their disk utilities products for the Mac platform.

It was time to look at the competing products to see if they were any better. Alsoft's DiskWarrior product has been heavily advertised in publications like MacWorld so I checked out what their website had to say. It turns out that they also need a updated CD to boot the latest Mac hardware, however they offer a software download that will allow you to create an updated CD (providing that you have a CD burner) so you don't have to pay for upgrade (providing that you already own a fairly current version). Their latest version (3.0.2) will only allow you to boot Mac's up to the 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5 models. Looking for info on the 2.5 GHz Power Mac G5 model I found this on their support web page.

Note: The current DiskWarrior CD may not start up the new Dual 2.5 GHz Power Mac models. Once these models have begun shipping, we will know if the current CD will start up these models or if an updated DiskWarrior CD will be necessary. We will post a notice on this page once we know if an updated CD will be necessary for these Macs.

It's been several weeks since they posted that and still no word on the PM 2.5 GHz compatibility. Time to look elsewhere.

Micromat is best known for their TechTool Pro products which includes all the functionality of their standalone disk utility, Drive 10. Rather than use the CD to boot, Drive 10 recommends installing a utility drive called eDrive onto your hard disk and then booting off of that when defraging and scanning your system disk for errors. This is probably the best solution as it prevents you from having to update your utility CD every time Apple releases a new OS. I look forward to installing this application, if all works well then TechTool Pro/Drive 10 will become a permanent part of my OS X software library.

Blog Inauguration

Just wanted to officially announce the Saint Cafe combining the writings of both myself and my brother Mark. (The name is somewhat of a placeholder until we can think of a better one.) This originally started off with numerous e-mails back and forth between a small circle of people -primarily Mark V., David V. and us. Then I started my own blog and Mark G. started his. After a while we decided it was easier just to combine our efforts and simply use one blog site. We decided to use Blogger because it's easy, supports team blogging, comments and offers the least amount of work to setup and edit. Enjoy.