HP preps Penryn workstations

What did we tell you, folks? Just yesterday, Lenovo rolled out the first Penryn desktops, signaling the beginning of the 45nm onslaught. Today, HP is doing the same, revealing two towers of its own design that sport those hot-off-the-assembly-line Penryns. The forthcoming xw8600 and xw6600 workstations can be configured to house any combination of two Intel CPUs from HP's list: the choices range from a dual-core Xeon 5200 up to a quad-core Xeon 5400, with clock speeds ranging from 1.86Ghz to 3.33Ghz. The lower-end xw6600 supports up to 32GB of DDR2 RAM and sports a DVD burner, numerous PCI and PCIe slots and can be configured with the NVIDIA Quadro or ATI FireGL graphics card of your choosing. Meanwhile, the xw8600 can be packed with as much as 128GB of RAM and has a bit more room for storage drives and PCI cards. Additionally, these new desktops are more eco-friendly than HPs of years past, sporting more efficient power supplies, lead-free CPUs and 90 percent recyclable components. No word yet on either price or ship dates (starting price of $1200/mid-December are rumored), though Penryn doesn't get "official" until the 12th, at which point we'll hopefully have more to chew on.

For more on the new workstations:
- see this Electronista article