HP xw9300 Workstation (nForce Professional / AMD Opteron) Available Now @ $1899

HP has introduced a powerful new workstation that offers customers dramatically increased graphics and computing performance. The company’s first workstation to include AMD Opteron™ processors and support for NVIDIA Quadro® SLI™ dual PCI Express graphics, the 64-bit HP xw9300 Workstation is built for customers with intensive computing demands - such as those in oil and gas exploration, computer-aided engineering (CAE), scientific research, software development and 3D animation. Users can improve productivity with the added performance and enhanced visualization capability of the dual AMD Opteron 200 series processors, the new NVIDIA nForce Professional chipset and dual NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics solutions.

“The HP xw9300 Workstation provides a broader choice of workstation products for our customers who demand reliable but advanced technologies that help increase productivity, lower costs and reduce risks,” said Jim Zafarana, vice president and worldwide marketing manager, Workstation Global Business Unit, HP. “For several months, customers have been asking for the AMD Opteron processor in our workstation family, while also calling for increased graphics capability for engineering design, animation development and scientific exploration. Today, we deliver on these requests with a product that can increase their productivity and help make them more competitive.”

The HP xw9300 Workstation is designed for graphics and data intensive applications such as those used in the discovery and production of oil and gas resources. This portion of the oil and gas market has the most computationally challenging applications, including geophysical and reservoir data analysis. The processing power of two AMD Opteron processors and advanced 3D graphics capabilities of dual PCI Express allow customers to visualize large data sets with greater accuracy, helping to reduce risk of error and potentially limit increased costs due to inaccuracies.

“As global demand for oil and gas increases, and new prospective oil fields become more complex, there is an urgent need to expand the use of 3D visualization technologies,” said Philip Neri, vice president of Technology, Paradigm. “With the graphics capability and performance gains of the HP xw9300 Workstation, and Paradigm’s ability to handle data volumes more than five times the workstation’s physical memory, geoscientists now have access to visualization and interpretation capabilities that were previously accessible only on graphic super-servers. This delivers an exceptional boost in productivity on every desktop and enables our clients to zero in on the right drilling site, thus lowering their exploration and operating costs.”

The blazing graphics performance of the HP xw9300 Workstation is made possible by the NVIDIA nForce Professional chipset enabling dual PCI Express x16 graphic slots. With dual PCI Express graphics, customers can run large models and display complex graphics with realism and speed. The HP xw9300 is the first workstation to be certified by NVIDIA to support SLI for NVIDIA Quadro.

“The NVIDIA nForce Professional MCP and the family of NVIDIA Quadro graphics boards offered with the HP xw9300 Workstation will provide customers with a platform that takes graphic performance and visualization to a new level,” said Jeff Brown, general manager, professional solutions group, NVIDIA. “This new platform introduces NVIDIA Quadro SLI, which delivers substantial advancements in design and research capabilities by integrating two PCI Express graphics boards into this extraordinary HP workstation.”

HP workstation customers who plan to migrate to a 64-bit environment will appreciate the AMD Opteron processor, with its ability to simultaneously run 32- and 64-bit applications. The AMD Opteron processor helps produce performance gains with its unique Direct Connect Architecture that reduces memory and other system bottlenecks, offering customers the ability for increased performance and efficiency behind demanding applications by reducing latency and memory consumption while increasing bandwidth.

“The new HP xw9300 Workstation based on the AMD Opteron processor with Direct Connect Architecture is the next step in high-end visualization workstations. HP is responding to the needs of workstation customers who are demanding an AMD Opteron processor-based computing solution that will provide the ultimate in 32- and 64-bit performance,” said Ben Williams, vice president, Enterprise and Server/Workstation Business, AMD. “HP is enabling dramatically increased computing performance with this outstanding workstation powered by dual AMD Opteron processors and PCI Express from NVIDIA.”

Rounding out the existing HP workstation line up with high-end performance and expandability, the top of the line HP xw9300 Workstation supports two AMD Opteron 200 series processors with the Model 246 (2.0 GHz), Model 248 (2.2 GHz), Model 250 (2.4 GHz), dual NVIDIA Quadro PCI Express x16 graphic solutions, the NVIDIA nForce Professional MCP, up to 16 gigabytes of memory, IEEE 1394 and USB 2.0 ports in the front and back, five internal hard drives for up to 1.5 terabytes of storage, and support for Windows® XP Professional, and Red Hat Linux WS3.0 (64-bit) operating systems.

The HP xw9300 is available now and starts at an estimated U.S. street price of $1,899.

About HP

HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company’s offerings span IT infrastructure, global services, business and home computing, and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended Oct. 31, 2004, HP revenue totaled $79.9 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.