The 64-bit computers have arrived, and whether you call them personal computers or workstations, there’s one thing you can call them and not be called to the carpet by the Better Business Bureau: Fast. Our first encounter with 64-bit computing is in the form of a BOXX Technologies workstation, the Dual Opteron 248-packing 3DBOXX R4.2 ($5728 as tested). Even though this speed demon was only running the currently 32-bit Windows XP Professional, it still turned in the fastest benchmark scores we’ve seen yet.

AMD’s Opterons are available in two flavors that are essentially the same chip – one group, the 100 series, is designed to run in a single-chip configuration, while the 200 series fits into a multi-processor setup, designed to run in pairs. I think a huge advantage of these chips, especially given the delayed release of Microsoft Windows XP’s 64-bit version, is their backward compatibility with 32-bit applications. As you’ll see in our benchmarks later in this article, this is not just some namby-pamby emulation, either, where everything runs slower. To the contrary. The 3DBOXX computer we tested has two processors on board, representing the fastest Opteron available at this writing, the 248, which runs at 2.21 GHz. Now don’t let that clock speed number fool you, because there’s a lot going on with each cycle inside these chips.

As is the custom with BOXX units we’ve reviewed before here at the Midwest Test Facility, this latest Opteron-stoking behemoth lives up to the high level of quality we’ve associated with BOXX Technologies. Not only does its case look exceeding aircraft-like, it’s light weight and convenient USB and 1394 access front and back are sure to delight digi-video jockeys. And inside that case are the finest computer components money can buy. Most remarkable are the two 74GB 10,000 RPM SATA 150 (serial ATA) disks inside, strapped together in a RAID 0 configuration, which turned in a dizzyingly fast read speed of 121MB/second, the fastest we’ve ever seen here, and an almost-as-impressive 88MB/sec. write speed. That’s the kind of quickness you can feel. Adding to the festivities are the 2GB of DDR 333 RAM sticks in a dual channel configuration, although we’d like to have seen DDR 400 memory, which is reportedly supported by this Opteron configuration. Paving the way for future expansion is room for lots more RAM, with 8 slots that can hold up to 16GB if you can believe that, but I suppose that will seem like a paltry amount in a year or two. We also like the NVidia Quadro FX1100 128MB graphics card, which I think hits the sweet spot of cost/performance. But then I guess now we have to call this a workstation because it has a hot graphics card like that on-board. Also inside the case is an exceedingly clean layout of cables and such, where all is clear for great air flow (see graphic below).

Speaking of air flow, another factor that’s been greatly improved is the noise level emanating from the unit. In the past, BOXX computers have been a bit on the cacophonous side, making lots of fan noise, especially when using AMD chips which need plenty of cooling technology or they’ll melt in a matter of seconds. But this time, the Boxxians have installed quieter fans on these Opteron chips. The Ajigo fans, while sound rated at 28 dB-A could still be quieter, are moving a lot of air to be only that loud. You might not even care about fan noise, but that’s a pet peeve of many of us here at the Midwest Test Facility, so much so that we’ve designed the entire new facility to have all its computers tucked away in special closets with their associated wires leading to and from them through special conduits. So maybe you can discount this noise talk, since we’re so anal about that around here. Even so, if fan noise is an issue with you, say, if you’re recording voice-overs at your desktop, you’ll certainly want to have your computer in a separate room. That said, BOXX has done an admirable job of silencing its latest machines.

So after we gawked at the 3DBOXX’s innards, we loaded up a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro and edited a few segments, just to get the feel for how fast this BOXX box really is. And I have to tell you, it was astonishingly fast. It just felt springy and light, and the playback of Premiere effects without any hardware acceleration was something that I’m sure would delight Premiere’s authors. Many of the functions just happened instantly. I can see how this system has headroom to spare, and look forward to using it for testing some of the HD editing systems I’ve been hearing rumblings about. I can’t think of a better platform on which to evaluate such a bandwidth-hungry application as HD editing in real time. This I gotta see. [an error occurred while processing this directive]

Next, we wanted to see how these Opteron processors stacked up against the computers we’ve tested in the past here. Of course, we were disappointed that Apple has still not sent us the promised G5, which is reportedly on the way, but then, we could keep waiting and not give you the pleasure of learning about this Opteron machine now. In fact, the original intent of this Opteron review was to stack it up against Apple’s fastest in a fourth installment of our notorious “Mac vs. PC” series. Rest assured, we still intend to compare the two platforms’ fastest machines, just not exactly at the same time. Other vendors – who will remain nameless at this point – are also interested in entering into the fray with machines sporting top-secret processors and configurations as well, so stay tuned for a battle royale where only the fastest computer will emerge victorious, sans BS.

Our benchmarks are centered around Adobe After Effects, now in version 6.0, because that’s a commonly-used compositing program, and happens to be the most processor-hungry software any content creator is likely to use. It serves as a great way to compare one computer to another, and since it’s available on Mac and PC, it serves as an excellent cross-platform benchmark as well. We run six separate, real-world comps for the core of our benchmark testing, consisting of six projects featured in the book, After Effects 5.5 Magic, a tutorial tome by New Riders Publishing. Special thanks to author Mark Christiansen and the book's editor, Nathan Moody, as well as New Riders Publishing for giving us permission to use materials from this excellent book. Highly recommended. Included in the book is a CD with all the QuickTime, Photoshop and Illustrator files for the projects for both Macs and PCs, along with the After Effects 5.5 project files for each platform. Render settings for all the tests in this article were set at Best and rendered lossless at 720x486. Each file was output to uncompressed Video for Windows files (.avi). In addition to those comps, we also ran CineBench 2003, which tests CPU rendering times. For a full explanation of our benchmarks and QuickTime examples of each one, click here.

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