Editor's
note: This
review is part of a Cadalyst Labs Report. Read "Mobile
CAD Workstations Priced Under $2,500" >to
learn how this model compares to the others
included in the product roundup.
Mobile CAD Workstations Priced Under $2,500
Mobile CAD Workstations Priced Under $2,500
Although we have reviewed countless desktop
workstations from @Xi Computer over the years,
relatively few mobile computers from the company
have passed through Cadalyst Labs. So, we were
happy to see an @Xi system in this roundup.
System Features
@Xi Computer sent us its Xi PowerGo XT notebook
workstation. This notebook includes a 17.3"
LED-backlit display panel with an antiglare
matte finish. It supports a maximum resolution
of 1,920 x 1,080 (full HD). The viewing angle is
wide for a notebook, and image brightness and
color saturation were both good. The unit as a
whole felt substantial. The handsome off-black
case measures 16.3" x 11.3" x 1.8" and weighs
8.6 lbs. The power brick (7" x 3.5" x 1.4")
weighs another 1.5 lbs. The Xi PowerGo XT was
the only system to arrive with a carrying case,
made of canvas. All told, when you're on the go
this system will account for more than 12 pounds
of luggage.

The Xi PowerGo XT mobile workstation
offers a 17.3" display and fantastic
computing performance for serious CAD
work — all for less than $2,500. |
Once you've come to terms with its weight, the
17.3" form factor for the Xi PowerGo XT affords
two advantages: its built-in display should be
fine for most AutoCAD work, and the full-sized
keyboard is luxurious when compared with smaller
units. Speaking of the keyboard, the Xi PowerGo
XT lets you control the color and brightness of
individual areas of the backlit keyboard, and
the integrated touchpad includes two buttons
with space in between for an optional
fingerprint reader.
The Xi PowerGo XT includes NVIDIA's Quadro
K3100M graphics card. This card, with 4 GB of
GDDR5 onboard memory, supports as many as three
external monitors, in conjunction with its
internal display, using the DisplayPort 1.2's
daisy-chain capabilities — but this requires
compatible monitors. Another option is to
connect two standard monitors using the
full-size DisplayPort and the mini DisplayPort
connectors provided.
In addition to the aforementioned monitor
connections, the Xi PowerGo XT includes just
about anything else you might require: one USB
2.0 port, three USB 3.0 ports (one powered), an
HDMI video port, a mini Firewire port, an eSATA/USB
combination port, a network adapter, four audio
ports (line in, line out, headphone, and S/PDIF
optical), and a 9-in-1 card reader. A
combination wireless adapter card supports the
802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 3.0 standards.
For an additional charge ($39) you can upgrade
to an adapter that supports the very latest
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth specs. An 8X DVD±R/RW burner
is also included.
Hard
drive storage on the Xi PowerGo XT is supplied
with a single Samsung 250-GB solid-state drive,
which boasts a 0.3-ms seek time and 1,500 g
shock rating. This leaves room for an upgrade to
a second drive. (Among the available options are
two SATA, 5,400-rpm hard drives: 500 GB for $89
and 1 TB for $139.) As for system memory, two of
four 204-pin SODIMM sockets are filled with 8-GB
DDR3 1,600-MHz DIMMs for a total of 16 GB. The
system supports a maximum of 32 GB.
Intel's Core i7-4810QM processor powers the Xi
PowerGo XT. This processor has a 6-MB level 3
cache and includes four cores and eight threads
(virtual processors). The base clock speed is
2.8 GHz, with turbo mode maxing out at 3.8 GHz.
The speed is adjusted to match the computing
demands, as well as maintain the temperature
within allowable bounds. A system of copper
heat-pipes and two rear-facing exhaust fans
helps keep the system cool. Fan noise was
noticeable at times, but not distracting.
Performance
To gauge system performance, we used a
combination of the Cadalyst c2015 benchmark
running AutoCAD 2015, and SPEC ViewPerf 11. Per
our standards, we enabled hardware acceleration
for AutoCAD, turned off the graphics card's
verticalsync, and set the screen resolution to
1,280 x 1,024 (32-bit color). @Xi Computer chose
the Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-bit operating
system.
The Xi PowerGo XT's Cadalyst c2015 benchmark
scores were as follows: total index = 564, 3D
graphics index = 1,291, 2D graphics index = 415,
disk index = 279, and CPU index = 273. The test
results for the SPECviewperf 11 suite of tests,
single-sample mode only, were as follows: 61.31
for catia-03, 40.44 for ensight-04, 72.95 for
lightwave-01, 118.57 for maya-03, 18.89 for
proe-05, 59.65 for sw-02, 54.23 for tcvis-02,
and 50.66 for snx-01. Its average score of 60 is
tops for this review. The Xi PowerGo XT's total
combined score for the two benchmarks is an
amazing 624 — less than eight-tenths of one
percent off the top mark and earning it an A+
for CAD performance.
The last thing we checked was the battery
performance while running the 1,000-loop option
of the c2015 benchmark. The Xi PowerGo XT
includes an 8-cell (77 WH) smart lithium-ion
battery. After multiple runs, we found the
battery lasted an average of 112 minutes, about
average for similarly sized systems in this
review.
Putting It All Together
Anyone looking to do serious AutoCAD work at the
office or on the go should consider the Xi
PowerGo XT, which offers both a 17.3" display
and fantastic computing power. Its price, as
configured for this review, is $2,496; ground
shipping pushes that to $2,538. Its one-year
warranty includes express advance parts
replacement (overnight shipping). Tech support
is free for the life of the workstation, and @Xi
Computer includes a 30-day money-back guarantee
(excluding shipping costs and software) — the
best of any vendor in this review. Highly
Recommended.
Testing Procedures
For this review we ran a pair of benchmarks on
each machine: our Cadalyst Labs c2015 v5.5
benchmark (with AutoCAD 2015) and SPECviewperf
v11. We calculated a total benchmark score by
adding the total index score from the c2015 test
and the average of the eight subset scores of
the SPECviewperf test. We ran all tests at a
resolution of 1,280 x 1,024 with 32-bit color.
As usual, we enabled hardware acceleration for
AutoCAD and turned off vertical sync for the
graphics card. We did our testing using
AutoCAD's integrated graphics driver and the
latest Windows driver from NVIDIA, the sole
graphics card vendor represented in this review.
You may want to download our benchmark test from www.cadalyst.com/benchmark-test to
measure the performance of your current
workstation for comparison purposes.
For those unfamiliar with our benchmark, c2015
reports a series of index numbers for the
following categories: Total Index (average of
the other four indexes); 3D Index (rotates 3D
models using four of AutoCAD's standard
rendering functions); 2D Index (runs a series of
commands for creating, modifying, and viewing
assorted 2D entities); Disk Index (reads and
writes to the hard drive multiple times using
several different I/O functions); and CPU Index
(loops through a series of simple calculations
thousands of times).
Larger numbers are better, because the index
numbers recorded by the test represent how many
times faster the test workstation is as compared
with the base workstation, which was a 1995 ALR
Pentium Pro system. (Yes, the roots of the
Cadalyst benchmark stretch back more than 19
years!) The SPECviewperf benchmark, created and
managed by the Standard Performance Evaluation
Corporation, consists of a set of tests designed
to represent the operation of eight
CAD/visualization programs. Again, larger
numbers are better. |