AMD Opteron/NVIDIA Quadro Desktop Workhorse

The AMD Opteron isn’t just for servers anymore. Now, its muscle is being unleashed on the desktop for those who need extreme processing power. The Appro XtremeWorkstation is a mid to high-end x86 workstation with up to 128GB of DDR2 memory and two to four AMD Opteron 8000 series processors.

Appro says it is ideal for technical workloads in mechanical computer aided design (MCAD), engineering (MCAE), petroleum visualization, automotive, aerospace, electronic design, digital content creation, 3D modeling and CAD. The XtremeWorkstation offers up to two PCI-Express x16 slots for high-end graphics cards such as the NVIDIA Quadro FX4500 X2 or the NVIDIA Quadro FX5500.

With the 128GB of memory, the new Appro workstation provides more than four times the graphics, processor and memory bandwidth, 25 percent lower memory latency and twice the compute power of the company’s prior models. Appro says the machine offers a non-disruptive upgrade path to native quad-core processors planned for later this year. The The Appro XtremeWorkstation is priced anywhere from $2,000 to $100,000, depending on configuration.