Thoughts
After we broke those spy shots back in May, a lot of people asked me whether I thought the ZMAXdp would ever get released. It's one thing to work on an engineering concept, but it's another thing to release a well-tested, well-engineered retail product based on that concept. I think we can lay any fears that the ZMAXdp won't see the light of day to rest. IWill showed it off to the public in Japan and they're obviously sampling nearly-ready units to their launch partners.Performance is strong, I think we can conclude that much, so the rest of the discussion remains feature and integration led. Dual Opteron in small form factor works, and it works well. I've left off talking about the noise the system made while under heavy load until this conclusion, since it's the noise I maybe was most impressed with. With low-power Opterons, CPU temperature never rose over 48C under load, and with a BIOS SmartFan threshold of 58C, the fans never made more than a half-hearted whisper. The ZMAXdp, with those CPUs, is nearly silent.
It's disgustingly well engineered and it works incredibly well. Just think about the implications of all that performance in such a small box for a second or two. It stretches much further than being a nice toy for the well-heeled Photoshop addict.
You'll know straight away if the ZMAXdp is for you, and be under no illusions about its ability to do what it sets out to do. Near-silent dual Opteron in a stylish, feature-packed small-form-factor chassis is that goal, and it absolutely hits the target.
Highly impressive. My only wish now is to test it with full-voltage Opteron 250s, to see if it works well there. With the right CPUs, it's an awesome product.
As a parting thought, imagine it with cool-running, dual-core Opterons next year, with a high-end graphics accelerator, plenty of memory and a pair of your favourite big hard disks. Start saving.
