Workstar W420-HE Workstation

From issue 55 of Linux User, November 2005
www.linuxuser.co.uk

DNUK Workstar W420-HE
An astonishingly powerful, well configured workstation which is far from ordinary

Pros: Fast, powerful and remarkably cheap, well integrated with Linux
Cons: Size and fan noise, but in the intended environment this will not be an issue
Price: £877 + VAT; £1146 + VAT for the W425-HE SCSI model

Rating: 5 out of 5

The next eighteen months will see some interesting developments on the desktop and if the hardware and software vendors, not to mention silicon companies like AMD, IBM and Intel, get their way we’ll see dual CPU systems, dual core CPUs and 64-bit CPUs all become commonplace. Yet, right now, if you’re willing to pay, you can get these kinds of machines. ASUS has introduced dual core motherboards, the Dell Dimension 9100 uses a dual core Pentium D and companies like Apple will happily sell you 64-bit, dual CPU machines. However, the Workstar W420-HE from UK manufacturer DNUK is the first machine this reviewer has come across that ticks all three boxes packing in a 64-bit architecture, dual CPUs and dual cores. In this case, the CPUs in question are two dual core AMD Opterons, running at a clock frequency of 2 GHz each. As you’d expect PC3200 RAM and storage by way of SATA are more than adequate.

Certainly mean, but very far from lean, this quaded out workstation could well meet the hefty hardware demands of the video production market

This is not DNUK’s first time gracing the pages of LinuxUser and Developer. Back in issue 29 (May 2003), our reviews editor took at look at the company’s Workstar W320, a dual Xeon system. The result was a stunning five out of five and his only real criticism was that the machine possessed a “huge, ugly case.” Let’s see how things have changed in the last two years. It really is a case of good, the better and the ugly.

DNUK describes itself as “one of the UK’s leading suppliers of workstations, servers and storage systems designed and optimised for the GNU/Linux based operating systems.” It’s a bold claim but if this machine is anything to go by, a fair one. The Workstar W420-HE is aimed at users who need the fastest workstation they can get, particularly within the CGI industry. Key users for the machine include software development, video editing, film image compositing and 3D graphics. An astonishingly powerful machine, this is not a typical Linux box. Taking a deeper look at the specifications mentioned earlier, the Workstar W420-HE is a dual core, dual CPU machine. This means that it is effectively a quad CPU unit. This kind of territory does not belong to the white boxed PC, rather we’re getting into the area of computing previously inhabited by Sun, SGI and IBM workstations. Very few high-power PCs are genuinely in workstation territory, despite what hardware manufacturers might want us to think. The Workstar W420-HE surely satisfies in this regard. And the story of this machine actually reflects the story of Linux as a whole. Never mind Windows, Linux has been seriously chipping away at proprietary Unix operating systems for the last five years. The availability of true workstation power hardware will doubtless see this process continue.

Yet, all of this power comes at a price. The machine is big, brutish and slightly noisy. The case is about half as wide again as an ordinary PC tower unit and much longer. It is actually a standard issue large midi tower. The industrial design is acceptable, although clearly we’re judging it on function rather than form. The fan noise is also noticeable, though not of motorcyle-like levels. It’s just a shame that the lock on the case isn’t actually an old-fashioned turn-key on switch that would reinforce the powerful feel of the box. I wouldn’t want this machine in my living room, but then again DNUK is not selling this as some sort of Mac Mini competitor. In fairness to DNUK it is much quieter than, say, and SGI Indigo 2, a much older and slower machine, and noise will not be noticed in its intended environment.

The Workstar W420-HE features, optionally, scalable link interface (SLI) on its graphics cards. SLI was introduced by NVIDIA in 2004 and, in a nutshell, it offers parallel processing for graphics, allowing two or more video cards to produce a single output. In an SLI setup, adding a second identical video card allows the amount of computable graphical complexity to be virtually doubled.

Depending on how you look at it, this is either a fly in the ointment or a future-proofing upgrade facility as the current NVIDIA driver does not support it under GNU/Linux. According to DNUK, by the time this review is published a new release of the driver is likely to be available. If SLI is important to you, ensure you check with NVIDIA or DNUK about the availability of a suitable driver and do remember to choose an appropriate set of video cards, for example the NVIDIA Quadro FX1400, FX3400, FX4400 or GeForce 6600, 6800 and 7800.

The pre-installed operating systems on the machine are the Red Hat-based Fedora Core 4 and Novell’s SUSE LINUX 9.3. Both performed admirably well, as would be expected from such a powerful machine. The machine can also run Windows, though our test machine did not feature any non-Linux operating systems.

Ultimately, the Workstar W420-HE is a superb workstation and well suited to a huge range of demanding professional applications. However, what is most interesting is its relatively low cost. Give the prevalence of hardcore GNU/Linux apps in this arena, such a machine would be ideal for small and independent commercial video production and effect houses.

Jason Walsh