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  • Digital Archaeology: Hewlett Packard Z220

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The Z220 SFF was a small form factor workstation from Hewlett Packard. When I think workstation, I generally think of relatively large, powerful machines with lots of room for expansion. To be fair, while this is a small form factor machine, it did come with pretty powerful options. Mine includes the following:

    • CPU: i5-3570 @ 3.4 GHz
    • RAM: 16 GB DDR3-1600 / PC3-12800
    • Video: AMD FirePro V3900
    • Hard Drive: Seagate ST3250410As (250 GB)

    For more detailed hardware info, checkout the reports from HWiNFO and CPU-Z.

    The CPU in this one is more mid-range but i7 and Xeon processors were available with this model. So while it’s definitely not very expandable, It still made for a reasonably powerful workstation…at least if you don’t need multiple CPUs or higher end GPUs.

    As mentioned above, the CPU in this machine is a mid-range option. The two most power CPUs available for it are the i7-3770 and the Xeon E3-1290v2. This Xeon and i7 are pretty close in terms of specs. The Xeon has a slight clock speed advantage and uses a little bit more power. Oddly, various benchmarks I’ve seen show the i7 coming out on top slightly. I have no idea why but it would seem to be the best choice for this machine especially given that it uses a little less power than the Xeon. the i7 is essentially the same as the i5 except that the i7 is hyperthreaded and the i5 is not.

    This machine already has a reasonably healthy amount of RAM at 16 GB. Officially, it supports up to 32 GB. I’ve seen people ask whether or not you can use 16 GB DIMMs in this machine but haven’t seen a definitive answer.

    Because of the limitations of the power supply, GPU choices are somewhat limited. Not to mention the fact that you need to use a low profile card. For a more modern upgrade, you could probably use something like a GT 1030 or GTX 1650…something that you can find a low profile version of and that doesn’t take an external power connector.

    This machine isn’t old enough to really consider it to be “retro”. At least I don’t. In fact, it still works perfectly well as a modern machine. It’s plenty fast enough as is for pretty much anything most people do on a computer. It’s only if you are interested in modern gaming or something that requires more computational muscle (like video processing or AI) that you would find this machine a bit lacking. There’s also still a modest upgrade path. A higher end i7 or Xeon processor will give you better multitasking capabilities and you can take it up to 32 GB if you feel the need. Even a somewhat more powerful video card is possible along with, of course, an SSD drive. This machine is not supported by Windows 11 but this seems to only be because of Microsoft’s attempts at intentional obsolescence. There are ways to install Windows 11 if you really want to or Linux works just fine as well.

    Like all of the machines I use, I’ve installed BOINC and have it attached to several projects. When powered on, it is crunching tasks for Einstein@home, Milkyway@home, Asteroids@home, Rosetta@home and World Community Grid. You can also see how it is doing overall at FreeDC.


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  • Digital Archaeology: Hewlett Packard xw4100

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The HP Workstation xw4100 was an entry level workstation featuring a Pentium 4 processor. Based on a bit of googling, it seems to have been a popular choice for video editors. At least I found a couple of generally positive reviews from video publications. This machine features:

    • CPU: Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz (Northwood)
    • RAM: 2 GB DDR-333
    • Video: nVidia Geforce2 MX400

    For more detailed hardware information, check out the reports from HWiNFO, CPU-Z or HardInfo.

    Early versions of the Pentium 4 earned a pretty bad reputation as being expensive, underperforming power hungry CPUs. They weren’t really much faster (and sometimes slower) than the Pentium III on a per MHz basis. The supposed advantage of the Pentium 4 was that it would be able to scale to very high clock speeds. It turned out that it couldn’t really do that either.

    Having said that, by the time the Northwood variant came along, the Pentium 4 had come into its own and if it couldn’t outright beat the competition (primarily the Athlon XP at the time), then it could at least keep up. By the time the hyperthreaded Pentium 4s came along during this same generation, Intel had regained their lead.

    For a Windows XP machine, a Pentium 4 is a great processor having plenty of speed for pretty much any game and fast for video editing too though at the time we were only talking about DVD resolution stuff. This machine has 2 GB of RAM which is plenty for most things. Windows XP can only see about 3.5 GB so it isn’t like you can go all that much further anyway. However, you could upgrade this machine to 4 GB if you wanted to.

    The weak spot in this machine is probably the Geforce2 MX 400. It’s a pretty low end card for this machine and I suspect that it may not even be what originally came with it. In theory, this machine could run a 32-bit version of Linux reasonably well (given its age anyway) but unfortuantely, neither official nVidia drivers nor open source drivers seem to support this card properly. It seems to be limited to 1024×768 resolution and the video refresh is really slow. In theory, a newer card would fix this issue.

    On the other hand, Windows XP still runs well. If you wanted to use it as a video editing machine for old DV stuff then it would be great. If you wanted to use it for gaming though, you would probably want to find a better AGP video card.

    Other than upgrading the video card and expanding the RAM to 4 GB (which would be especially useful for Linux), you could also upgrade the CPU if you wanted to. It should support at least a 3.06 GHz hyperthreaded Pentium 4. I currently have both Linux and Windows XP installed. However, utnil I get a different video card installed, I’ll probably stick to using Windows XP as it performs much better (and supports the proper resolution).

    Like all of the machines I use, this one has BOINC installed and is participating in various projects including Einstein@home, Asteroids@home and World Community Grid. These seem to be the only three of the six projects I regularly participate in that still support 32-bit. You can see how it is doing overall at FreeDC.


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  • Digital Archaeology: HP Pavilion m7570n

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The HP Pavilion M7570N is a somewhat interesting machine. It was designed to be a multimedia hub and it certainly provided a lot of multimedia related functionality. It includes a DVD-ROM drive as well as a separate CD/DVD writer, a card reader that accepts a variety of media card formats, a TV tuner card, analog video capture capabilities, and of course firewire in addition to USB ports.

    Powering all of this was a Pentium D processor and 2 GB of DDR2 RAM. The one big deficiency was the lack of a dedicated GPU. However, that really only mattered for gaming and not the media oriented tasks this computer was designed for. Hardware in this machine includes:

    • CPU: Pentium D 915 @ 2.8 GHz
    • Memory; 2 GB DDR2 @ 266 MHz (533 MHz)
    • Video: Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME (integrated)

    Plus all of the above mentioned goodies. Check out the output of HWiNFO or CPU-Z for more detailed hardware info.

    The Pentium D was an interesting processor and it was a sort of interesting time for Intel in general. The Pentium 4 was nearing the end of its life as the Netburst architecture ended up being a bust (or burst?) because it couldn’t scale as much as Intel originally thought. At one time, it was thought that the Netburst architecture could reach speeds of 10 GHz. That didn’t happen and still hasn’t for that matter. the Pentium 4 HT and Pentium D were sort of stop gap measures as the Core 2 was being developed. The Pentium 4 HT mitigated the missed branch predictions of the long pipeline of the Pentium 4 modestly my adding an extra thread whereas the Pentium D stuck two Pentium 4 cores together. Both also added 64-bit extensions depending on the specific model.

    The motherboard is built by Asus. The HP model number is the Leucite-GL8E while the Asus model number is the P5LP-LE. It features the Intel 945G (Lakeport-G) chipset which was one of the earliest to use Socket 775. It was featured in a number of HP models including the Pavilion A1512X Desktop, Pavilion A1530N Desktop, Pavilion A1542N Desktop, Pavilion A1550Y Desktop, Pavilion A1560N Desktop, Pavilion A1613W Desktop, Pavilion Media Center M7500Y, Pavilion Media Center M7570N (this machine), and Pavilion Media Center M7658N. There does seem to be a fairly significant upgrade path. According to one random website, supported CPUs include:

    • Core 2 Duo E6x00
    • Core 2 Duo E4x00
    • Pentium D 9×0 Dual Core
    • Pentium D 8xx Dual Core
    • Pentium 4 6×1 series
    • Celeron D 3xx series

    There is a significant spread on possible front side bus speeds depending on the CPU including 533 MHz, 800 MHz, and 1066 MHz. It features a dual channel memory architecture with support for four 240-pin DDR2 DIMMs including PC2 3200 (400 MHz), PC 4200 (533 MHz), and PC2 5300 (667 MHz) DDR2 DIMMs.

    I recently looked at a 3.2 GHz hyperthreaded model and compared to that, this dual core Pentium D feels much snappier despite being clocked slower. The extra core really helps at least with more modern operating systems. You probably wouldn’t notice it as much with Windows XP for example. If this motherboard can indeed support up to a Core 2 Duo E6700 then that would nearly double its speed.

    The sticker on the front says “designed for Windows XP” and “compatible with Windows Vista”. Currently, Windows 7 is installed. As a multimedia center it was pretty nice at the time it was released, however, it became outdated pretty quickly both in terms of features and support. The TV tuner card is analog and doesn’t do HD. Driver support in Windows 7 was an afterthought and those drivers are hard to find. The applications that came with this PC for using the TV tuner card do not work in 64-bit Windows 7. I was finally able to find drivers and the card, at least for video capture, and it seems to work with VirtualDub. I can see how this machine would still be useful if you had any analog video capture needs. However, I doubt that the capture card that is in it would work with Windows 10/11 and I’m skeptical about it working in Linux as well.

    I’ll probably keep this computer around. It’s always nice to have a way to handle legacy media. In theory, I should be able to use this machine to capture VHS, 8mm, and other analog video formats. There are of course analog video options for modern systems, but what fun is that?

    Like pretty much any machine I turn on, if it is capably, I have it crunching tasks for BOINC. Despite the older hardware and OS, it can still crunch tasks for at least MilkyWay@home, World Community Grid, Einstein@home, Universe@home, and Asteroids@home and probably others. You can check out how it is doing overall via FreeDC.


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