“Rock-star” HP Nehalem-powered Z-series Workstation features FirePro accelerators

Last week HP unveiled (with much fanfare) their new Z-series workstation PC powered by Intel’s Nehalem Xeon processors.  The rock-star moniker refers both to the zippy tech specs as well as to the pretty sexy exterior (for a professional workstation) having been designed by BMW Group Designworks. The Z800 can hold as much as 192GB of DDR3 memory, along with up to two Intel Xeon processors, with the 3.2GHz, quad-core W5580 being the top-of-the-line offering. When running at full power, HP claims the workstations can deliver performance increases of between 50 to 500 per cent, depending on the application. Obviously the graphics cards here make a huge difference and HP is offering the ATI FirePro V7750, as well as the ATI FirePro V3700 and ATI FirePro V5700 graphics accelerators as options.  The new HP Z Workstations with FirePro graphics are already certified for more than 35 CAD/CAE and DCC apps such as SolidWorks 2009, 3ds Max 2009, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.