Studio: Two CPU Or Not Two CPU?
As everything moves into the cloud, into a realm of wireless hand-held mobility, I nevertheless find it difficult to abandon the era of big, foot-warming personal computers, having spent much time working beside some very large and very loud workstations.   Like a prisoner who eventually grows to identify with their captor, there is more than a hint of remorse saying "goodbye" to the following dual-processing rigs.



The Last Ride: Dual Xeon E5-2670 Sandy Bridge-EP Workstation


Laptop and notepad hardware performance levels continue to rise, so this may be the last personal computer I will ever build.   In recognition of the march toward ever smaller mobile platforms, this last ride packs a ton of power in the smallest footprint ever.   With 16 physical cores and 64GB of memory, several server configurations are supported for ultimate engineering flexibility.   VMWare Workstation is used to create several Linux virtual machines, each safely running various database, web service and application servers.  



Dual Xeon E5-2670 CPUs @ 2.6GHz



16 Cores, 32 Logical Processors


Specifications

Make Custom Build
Configuration Web/Database Server, Digital Content Creation
Chassis Cooler Master HAF XB ATX
Power Supply KingWin LZP-1000, 80 PLUS Platinum Modular Power Supply
Motherboard ASUS Z9PA-D8 Dual LGA 2011 ATX, PIKE 2008 Daughter RAID adapter
Processors 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2670 @ 2.6GHz, 8-Core Sandy Bridge-EP Processor, 3.0GHz Turbo Boost, 20MB L3 Cache
Memory 8 x Samsung 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz, 64GB ECC Registered Memory
Graphics Accelerator nVidia Quadro K5000 Graphics Card, 1536 CUDA Cores, 4GB GDDR5 Memory
System/Boot Storage 2 x Samsung 840 Series 250GB Solid State Drive (SSD) in RAID-0 (500GB)
RAID Storage 4 x Seagate Momentus XT 1GB SATA 6.0Gbs Solid State Hybrid, 2TB, RAID-10








2005 Alienware MJ-12 7750 Digital Content Creation Workstation


















9.82s Vasefield Render Time, NVIDIA Gelato 1.2 Beta 3



Dual Xeon EMT64 CPUs



Two Cores, Four Logical Processors


Specifications

Make Alienware
Model MJ-12 7750
Configuration Digital Content Creation
Chassis Chenbro SR105 Professional Workstation Chassis
Power Supply Enermax EG851AX-VH 660W with Opti-UPS ES1500C 1400VA 980W
Motherboard X2 Dual Xeon SLI Tumwater Motherboard
Processors Dual Intel Xeon 3.6GHz Hyperthreading EM64T 64-bit 800 MHz FSB 1MB
Memory 3GB Dual Channel DDR2 Registered ECC SDRAM at 400MHz
Graphics Accelerator NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400 PCI Express 512MB GDDR3 Dual-DVI S-Video
System Drives WinXP: 148GB SATA RAID-0 74GBx2 Western Digital Raptor 10K 16MB
Linux: 72GB SATA RAID-0 36GBx2 Western Digital Raptor 10K 16MB
A/V Drives WinXP: 800GB SATA RAID-0 400GBx2 Hitachi Deskstar 7K400 7K 16MB
Linux: 500GB SATA RAID-0 250GBx2 Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 7K 16MB
Hard Drive Bay Hot-Swap Cage with 80mm Fan
Primary Optical Drive NEC ND-3520 16x Dual Layer DVD+-R/W Recorder
2nd Optical Drive Plextor PlexWriter Premium 52x32x52x CD-R/W Recorder
Removable Storage 10-in-1 Digital Media R/W
Network Connection Integrated High Performance Gigabit Ethernet
I/O Controllers SIIG USB 2.0 5-Port PCI and SIIG Firewire 800 3-Port PCI
Display Apple 30" Cinema HD Display at 2560 x 1600
Primary Digital Audio Creative Audigy 2 ZS High Definition 7.1 Surround PCI
2nd Digital Audio Creative Extigy High Definition 5.1 Surround USB 2.0
Theatre Sound Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1








2000 Dell Precision 420 Workstation



Avid/Maya Rendering Victim!












Double Slot-1 Motherboard



Dual Pentium III CPUs



Two Cores


Specifications

Make Dell
Model Precision 420
Configuration Engineering Workstation
Chassis Dell Mini-Tower Chassis
Power Supply 425W
Motherboard Dell Dual Pentium Slot-1 Motherboard
Processors Dual Intel Pentium III 1.0GHz 133 MHz FSB 256KB Cache
Memory 2GB Registered ECC RDRAM at 200MHz
Graphics Accelerator ATI Radeon 9600 XT 128MB DVI
System Drive 36GB Seagate ST3367070SLW SCSI
A/V Drive 73GB Seagate ST373207SLW SCSI
Primary Optical Drive Pioneer 305 SCSI DVD-ROM Drive
2nd Optical Drive Sony CRX140 CD-R/W Drive
I/O Controllers SIIG USB 2.0 5-Port PCI
SIIG Firewire 800 3-Port PCI
Primary Digital Audio Creative Extigy High Definition 5.1 Surround USB 2.0
Theatre Sound Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1








1994 Micron PowerServer



Just booting XP with light surfing was an ordeal!

















Specifications

Make Micron
Model PowerServer Plus
Configuration EISA/PCI Server
Chassis Full Tower Chassis
Processor Dual Intel Pentium Socket 5 Processors at 133MHz
Memory 256MB
Graphics Accelerator Diamond Stealth PCI 64MB
System Drive 4GB Conner SCSI Hard Disk
Data Drive 8GB Seagate SCSI Hard Disk
Optical Drive Plextor 6Plex CDR
Display Nanao FlexScan T2-17
Digital Audio Creative SoundBlaster AWE32

vistors as of Friday, 2 Jun 2023 at 05:49:03 AM PDT