Workstar W320 Workstation

From issue 29 of Linux User, May 2003
www.linuxuser.co.uk

DNUK Workstar W320
High performance dual Xeon workstation pre-loaded and expertly configured with Red Hat Linux 8.0

Pros: Well specced and configured hardware, excellent performance
Cons: Huge, ugly case
Price: £2713 (£3317 inc. VAT)

Rating: 5 out of 5

Digital Networks UK (DNUK) have always pushed the envelope when it comes to speccing high-end Linux workstations, and this powerful machine is no exception. If you think a high performance workstation simply means a P4 box with plenty of RAM and a decent video card, you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise. The Workstar W320 is based around the excellent Xeon processor and makes use of PC2100 DDR RAM for improved performance. Nearly all hardware options such as processor speed, size of memory or hard drive can be configured online prior to ordering, and it is possible to push this box into ultimate Linux machine territory with up to 4GB RAM possible on board and seriously high-end graphics cards available. The review machine sported two 3.06GHz Xeons, 2GB of RAM, a 120GB ATA/100 drive and a NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4800 with 128MB DDR. A DVD-ROM drive comes as standard and connectivity is excellent with 4 USB ports, FireWire and Gigabit Ethernet. This kind of spec puts the Workstar W320 firmly in the frame if you’re looking for a serious scientific or 3D graphics workstation. FireWire and decent sound support also make this a good option for those working in multimedia and video editing environments. And gamers with a bit of spare cash won’t be disappointed.

However, such serious power doesn’t weigh in lightly these days, and DNUK have never favoured style over power. The Workstar is a heavy, ugly beast. The noise of case, power supply, processor and GeForce fans does add up and the W320 could easily double up as a fan heater. That said it’s a good, solid build and both backup and UPS solutions can also be specced with the Workstar. The huge case makes for easy upgradeability with plenty of room for extra drives and five spare PCI slots available.

DNUK’s Workstar W320 is a hefty contender in the ultimate Linux box stakes. Configuration is excellent, clean and unfussy, which should appeal to power users wishing to put great hardware to some serious uses

The Workstar boots swiftly through BIOS, GRUB and a 2.4.18 SMP kernel. I was a little disappointed by the range of options and information presented by the BIOS, but this a minor niggle on an otherwise well thought out box. The kernel reports four CPUs, which is as it should be, given that the Xeons make use of Hyperthreading. All hardware appeared to function perfectly and much work has been put into getting cutting edge components to play well. The network is configured to use DHCP, so it should be seriously easy to get the box online. The class of install is specified online, and you can choose desktop environments or a server install. The review machine was running KDE as customised under Red Hat 8.0, and a good array of packages was installed with the full OpenOffice.org suite available and plenty of handy multimedia and system tools. XFree86 appeared to be very well set up, with the binary NVIDIA driver and module in place. The resolution was excellent and, as you’d expect from such a system, KDE was entirely responsive and looking very good indeed. In contrast to other such pre-builds, DNUK provide a minimally customised, highly functional system which users can easily configure to suit their needs given this solid base. Red Hat tools make for simple setup of a range of services and options, and Webmin is also running in the background for easy remote configuration. I found the system to be much cleaner than previous DNUK systems; the working experience was entirely glitch free.

Benchmarking such a cutting edge system is always tricky, given that apps can be heavily customised to suit the hardware both code-wise and at compile time. And benchmarks only really make sense if they relate to practical use. Compile times, rendering and 3D performance benchmarks can all be usefully applied to real-world scenarios. A stock, default configured 2.4.20 kernel compiled in on minute 24 seconds with the -j4 option running jobs across all 2 hyperthreaded processors. Without the -j4 switch, making use of default scheduling of tasks across the Xeons, the compile time was around two minutes 45 seconds. The latest Povray 3.5 rendering software also provides a useful cross-platform benchmark. The standard Povray binary only used on processor, but the result of around 35 minutes was quite encouraging. The OpenGL-based SPECviewperf series of benchmarks also gave dazzling real-time results and Quake 3 tests gave superb results with fps never dipping below 300 even at good levels of detail. These real-world oriented benchmarks show that without much work the W320 responds well to any rendering or computational task thrown at it. This bodes well for power users who obviously know how to put such hardware to good use.

The Workstar W320 is a solid workstation which would perform well in a good range of demanding environments. For those put off by the size and weight of this beast, the cheaper Workstar W320-EL model may be a better bet if you’re willing to sacrifice expandability and Gigabit Ethernet options. There’s very little to find fault with here. It would perhaps be good to see a better range of multimedia options supported when specifying components online. I can see this box making a great video editing and compositing platform, and it would be nice if DNUK could integrate suitable hardware. And the Workstar really would stand out if cutting edge hardware was matched with a source based distro such as Gentoo.

Martin Howse
martin@linuxuser.co.uk