By Randall S. Newton
Editor-in-Chief
In March, Dell Computer surprised many in the industry by acquiring boutique computer manufacturer Alienware of Miami, Florida. As we reported at the time, the purchase was a way for Dell to increase its stake in the high-performance segment of the market, where it was losing out to increased competition from HP, IBM and Apple. At the time, Alienware had already begun to branch out from its core market—top-of-the-line gaming computers—with notebooks, workstations and servers. The Dell acquisition gives many corporate customers a new reason to consider Alienware as a vendor. In my experience, they should.
Browse through the Alienware web site today; you won’t find a mention of Dell anywhere. Dell founder and chairman Michael Dell said at the time of purchase Alienware would run as a separate subsidiary; that still seems to be the plan. What you do find are pages for corporate users, a line of workstations that look more appropriate in an office than a dorm, and a line of mobile workstations that will give owners arms and shoulders like a gorilla if actually used as a traveling computer.
I just completed a test period running an Alienware MJ-12 7500a, a workstation designed for visualization and professional graphics applications. I almost cried when I had to box it up for shipment back to Miami. My daily work computer is a 1.8 GHz Compaq notebook, adequate for routine office tasks. But phrases like “pathetic” and “slower than molasses in winter” come to mind when I compare it to the Alienware workstation.
The processor was an AMD Opteron 180, a dual-core CPU with a rated speed of 2.4 GHz. I have talked to several graphics hardware gurus over the years and have come to the conclusion that AMD has achieved a significant edge over Intel in fundamental graphics performance. Video card manufacturers have made tremendous progress over the years, and that erases some of the AMD advantage over Intel. But if I were spec’ing workstations today, I would still start with AMD. (Some analysts say one reason Dell bought Alienware was to sneak AMD in through the back door, since Dell has historically been an Intel-only manufacturer.)
Today video card vendors refer to their products as graphics processing units (GPU’s), because of both their power and their use of a dedicated processor that removes much of the burden for processing graphics from the computer’s CPU. The GPU in the review computer was an NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450, equipped with 256 MB of dedicated (DDR3) memory. Before the review computer arrived, I thought 256 MB might not be enough dedicated memory for an AEC design workstation, but performance was exceptional. The memory on the GPU is for graphics processing, not for holding the file or model in use. The computer came with 2 GB of RAM (low-latency dual channel DDR SDRAM at 400 MHZ); the combination of 256 MB on the GPU and 2 GB of motherboard RAM worked well. The MJ-12 7500a is designed to hold two GPU’s, although only one was installed. For the most demanding applications (high-rise BIM models, 3D civil design, 3D laser point cloud use), I think adding the second GPU would be a must.
The computer ran flawlessly and fast. My only complaint is not something Alienware can solve, but must be addressed by the semi-conductor industry at large. We need today’s powerful computers, but today’s powerful computers require large amounts of energy and they generate large amounts of heat as a byproduct. My review unit was in a room that did not have air conditioning, and there was a noticeable heat “bubble” in the immediate vicinity.
The issues of heat dissipation and electricity use are starting to affect the bottom line of large corporations. If you have a hundred or a thousand such computers in a building, it changes the HVAC load. Companies such as Google and Yahoo! are starting to build or acquire computing centers in the inland Pacific Northwest (which offers cheap real estate and the nation’s cheapest electricity rates) just because of the increased electrical use of today’s computers. Sun Microsystems is selling servers with a redesigned CPU that cuts down on energy use; AMD and Intel are working on cutting energy use in their new processors. Energy-efficient computing can’t come too soon.
Other features of the review unit:
- Dual Gigabit Ethernet
- Integrated high-performance 7.1 Surround Sound with both A/PDIF and Coaxial Digital output
- Microsoft basic keyboard and optical scroll mouse
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
- Black mid-tower chassis
- Alienware nForce 4 SLI motherboard chipset with dual PCI-Express x16
- 300 GB RAID 0 hard drive (2 x 150 GB Serial ATA, 10,000 RPM, 16 MB cache)
- 16x dual-layer DVD+/-R/W with LightScribe technology
- Oversized custom mouse pad designed for use with an optical mouse
- 24/7 phone support and onsite service guarantee for one year
- Starting price, $1,399; as equipped (priced in February), $3,826.00
If you are looking for a top-notch AEC or GIS design/engineering workstation, put Alienware on your short list.
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