Dell Intros Enhanced PowerEdge Servers and Precision Workstations

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Dell has enhanced its ninth-generation PowerEdge servers and Dell Precision workstations with the industry's first standards-based quad-core processors. The addition of Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors to the two-socket Dell PowerEdge 1900, 1950, 2950, 2900, SC1430 and 1955 blade models support the company's strategy to drive more complete and cost-effective enterprise technologies across a variety of customer environments. Equipped with new Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, these servers can rival the performance of Intel dual-core, four-socket systems and deliver up to 63 percent greater performance with up to 40 percent enhanced performance per watt while continuing to reduce complexity in the enterprise.

The addition of quad-core processors across the Dell Precision desktop portfolio underscores Dell's commitment to deliver the highest performance and scalability in standards-based professional workstations. Quad-core processors combined with Dell's faster and more scalable memory architecture and latest OpenGL graphics mean professional workstation customers can handle the most demanding multi-threaded applications faster and more easily than ever.

Customers can now configure the two-socket Dell Precision 690 and Dell Precision 490 with new Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, while the single-socket Dell Precision 390 supports the Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor. Performance of heavily multi-threaded applications, such as Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya 3D animation, modeling and rendering components, can scale dramatically with the addition of processor cores. When configured with Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, the Dell Precision 690 and 490 workstations can deliver hardware performance gains of up to 54 percent on multi-threaded applications.

With the addition of quad-core processors to Dell's server lineup, the company is accelerating its vision of scale-out computing in the enterprise. Overall performance and performance-per-watt improvements - combined with the value, expandability, availability and density of quad-core processors - deliver a compelling platform for enterprise computing. The platform offers a suitable choice to capitalize on consolidation and virtualization projects by better balancing capacity demand within the same physical space and price range. In a virtualized environment, the new processors on Dell hardware have shown up to a 69 percent performance improvement. In addition, the Dell PowerEdge 1950, 1955, 2900 and 2950 with quad-core processors are certified for VMware VI 3 virtualization software.

Dell has made major investments in many areas of its partnership with VMware to deliver complete virtualization solutions that include products, customer tools, joint engineering efforts and services to simplify the deployment of virtualized infrastructures. Dell also offers tested and supported virtualization configurations on Dell servers and Dell/EMC storage helping customers realize the benefits of virtualization while minimizing complexity, risk and cost. Dell and VMware's partnership helps ensure the highest quality delivery of professional services so that customers can take full advantage of VMware's product suite.

Dell offers a Virtualization Readiness Assessment Service - a fixed price, fixed scope offering enabling customers to make informed decisions on how to simplify their environment through virtualization. The service is designed to help customers fully understand their environment, virtualize the right workloads, and accelerate cost savings. The company has also partnered with additional software providers to ensure customers get the right virtualization solution for their environment. Some of those companies include: PlateSpin, Altiris, visioncore, Microsoft and CommVault. Virtualization is a key component of Dell's scalable enterprise strategy that holds the promise of helping customers cost effectively scale, improve utilization and simplify operations.

Dell's server portfolio is designed to deliver customer-driven industrial design enhancements for improved manageability such as an industry-first programmable LCD, individually labeled hard drives and standardized color coding and cabling. Dell ImageWatch is a unique service that helps customers proactively manage the number of changes to system images, available in a block-release format further reducing the number of image changes to manage.

Dell PowerEdge servers deliver excellent performance and reliability with the latest standards-based technologies such as:
- Fully buffered dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs) that are designed to provide faster data transmission and improved signal integrity and error detection
- Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) hard drives for faster, more reliable data transmission and reduced thermal output
- TCP/IP Offload Engine, which helps reduce traffic on a host processor to enhance system performance
- Enhanced virtualization technology that can improve performance, management and utilization in virtualized workloads such as VMware ESX, Microsoft Virtual Server or Xen
- PCI-Express I/O, which delivers high-performance Ethernet, RAID, InfiniBand and Fibre Channel interconnect and investment protection for future technologies.

The Dell Precision 690 and Dell Precision 490 were designed from the ground up to enable customers who work with massive data sets to more easily manipulate and manage workloads and images.

The Dell Precision 390 delivers an optimal balance of advanced performance, scalability and price to workstation professionals who run business-critical threaded and rendering applications. The Dell Precision 390 and 490 provide excellent flexibility for deployment or redeployment, allowing easy conversion between a tower and desktop configuration and, because the chassis are rack-mountable, they are suited for larger, networked deployments.

All Dell Precision workstations offer SAS disk storage that delivers up to 50 percent higher performance than SATA 10K and a range of SATA and SAS hard drives up to 750GB including RAID functionality. The Dell Precision 690 is configurable with up to five hard drives, the Dell Precision 490 up to three, and the Dell Precision 390 up to four. Additionally, each offers a choice of NVIDIA and ATI graphics options for excellent graphics performance.

Dell Precision 690 features:
- Dual CPU socket and dual front-side buses provide up to eight high-performance processor cores with Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors.
- Double the number of memory channels to four supporting fully buffered DIMMs and a unique, scalable advanced memory design – up to 16 DIMMs via optional memory risers – for up to 64GB of memory.
- Enhanced graphics capabilities, with an optional dual-graphics riser card (on the 1KW system) that combine two NVIDIA SLI graphics cards for increased performance and visual quality plus support for quad-monitor configurations.

Dell Precision 490 features:
- Dual CPU socket and dual front-side buses provide up to eight high-performance processor cores with Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors in a compact chassis.
- Double the number of memory channels, to four, supporting fully buffered DIMMs for up to 32GB of memory.

Dell Precision 390 features:
- Investment protection and scalable compute performance – from single to dual- and Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processors.

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