Timing is everything when buying a computer. If you buy too early, you
may miss a significant leap in performance. If you wait too long, you
may miss the opportunity of having a faster system. It’s a tricky
decision. Sometimes you luck out and catch the technology wave just as
it reaches a major crest-when several innovations are launched
simultaneously. Fortunately, we’re positioned at one of those uncommon
moments when workstations can jump three steps forward, rather than the
usual one or two steps.

Hewlett-Packard held the release of its new HP xw9300 workstation in
order to introduce several technology advancements at the same time.
It’s the first HP workstation to support dual AMD Opteron processors
(you can also opt for a single Opteron processor). It’s also the first
HP workstation to support dual PCI Express x16 graphics cards (you can
simultaneously run two Apple 30-inch Cinema HD Displays at their native
2650 x 1600 resolution, or four 1600 x 1200 resolution monitors).

In addition, the xw9300 is well equipped to incorporate future
innovations. While it currently ships with SATA (Serial ATA) hard
drives, the disk controller is fully SATA II compatible, so you’ll be
able to swap the SATA drives for faster SATA II drives when they’re
introduced later in the year. SATA II drives have a peak bandwidth of
300 MBps versus 150 MBps for SATA drives. And because the Opteron is a
64-bit processor that’s fully compatible with 32-bit software, you’ll
be able to run all your current 32-bit Windows programs, as well as
future programs that access the faster 64-bit portions of the
processor. The xw9300 goes as far as any system available in helping to
ease the inevitable pain of obsolescence.

Any Windows workstation worth its salt had better be expandable. Here
the xw9300 earns high marks for both the extent and ease of its
expandability. The sturdily built chassis can accommodate five hard
drives and three optical disc drives. It also has five PCI Express
slots and one PCI slot. The Opteron processor can address an astounding
256 TB of memory, though the xw9300 has a practical limit of 16 GB.
Adding memory or other hardware components is made easier by the
tool-less design of the chassis. Pull the handle on the side, and the
entire side panel pops open.

Video professionals will be especially pleased with the acoustic
dampening added to the hard drive rails to minimize vibration (and thus
lower the system noise). There’s also a new circuitry to allow the fans
to run at lower speeds when the system is idling or driving less
power-hungry applications. It is one of the quietest workstations I’ve
evaluated, which is quite an accomplishment when you consider the
horsepower simmering under the hood. On the other hand, it was
noticeably louder than my six-month-old Dell Dimension 8400, so an
acceptable level of noise may depend on what you’re used to.

Another nice feature for video work is the xw9300’s HP Performance
Tuning Framework, which provides system setup guides and pre-programmed
configurations for some of the most popular applications. At press
time, the tuning frameworks included Alias Maya, Alias StudioTools and
Autodesk 3ds max.

The xw9300 that HP configured for this review cost just under $4,000 (
$3,998 to be exact). Even though it wasn’t fully decked out, it
performed admirably with two of my medium-priced video editing
applications: Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 and Sony Media Software’s Vegas 5.
Both applications felt responsive, even when I piled on multiple video
and audio tracks. The xw9300 was equipped with a single 2.4 GHz Opteron
processor, an Nvidia Quadro NVS 280 PCI Express
graphics card, 2 GB of RAM and two 80GB SATA hard drives. With this
configuration, I was able to slow down the editing suites by increasing
the number of processor-intensive plug-ins, or by layering on
high-definition video tracks. If you opt for a dual processor
configuration and add SATA II drives when they’re available, you would
have even greater flexibility in processing your video in real time.

Unless you’re required to purchase a turnkey system, you would be
hard-pressed to find a more capable Windows-based video editing
workstation. I spoke with an HP representative who indicated the
company is talking with NLE companies about including the xw9300 in
their turnkey packages. It would make a lot of sense, as HP currently
offers the most advanced system. If you want to match an xw9300 to your
standalone software, you can purchase the system online and choose the
configuration that fits your needs and budget. The xw9300 is
competitively priced, but if you need a no-frills editing system, it
may be overkill, even if configured modestly.