The new Dell 'Fractal' T3600, T5600 & T7600 Precision workstations are apparently going to be out very soon, leaked photos here : http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/13/dell-fractal-workstation-designs-revealed/
Doug From: ag-tech-boun...@lists.mcs.anl.gov [mailto:ag-tech-boun...@lists.mcs.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Jonathan Klubek Sent: Saturday, 26 February 2011 12:30 AM To: ag-t...@lists.mcs.anl.gov Subject: [AG-TECH] Access Grid Hardware/Software Questions My group at our university was recently tasked by one of our departments to construct an access grid facility (this facility will also function for other types of conferencing and classroom needs also). After much reading we have determined many pieces we need to get including things such as several ClearOne, Crestron and Extron products to control the various audio and video pieces ranging from scaling windows on the projectors and switching sources to mixing and cancelling echo on the microphones on the various tables. The problem we are running into in examining everything is with the access grid machine itself. We have looked at the technology and many of the pieces of hardware are many years old and we are seeing possible issues with integration as things such as PCI are replaced with PCI-e. We are looking at going with a Dell Precision workstation T7500 to be the access grid machine and have thought about adding more memory and a second processor to it (remember that it will serve multiple purposes. . My questions are the following: 1. I see that the software is listed for Linux, OS X, and Windows. We most likely will be going with Windows so we can support Microsoft Link also. This software is listed for Windows XP but does it work with Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit. This is extremely important with Windows XP support coming to a close. Also, with the increased resources we plan to use it may be necessary to use 64-bit to take advantage of things such as 4+ GB of memory. 2. As mentioned before the technologies listed are out of date. We are especially seeing this with the video capture cards and audio cards. I was wondering if the following would be supported: a. SoundBlaster X-FI XtremeMusic (D)w/Dolby Digital 5.1 (this was the card option on the Dell) – if not is there a newer card than the one listed that is? We will of course need to integrate with our other products. b. Datapath VisionRGB-E1 PCI-e RGB/DVI capture card c. Osprey Osprey-450e PCI-e Analog video capture card If not we are looking for several recommendations of much newer technology that is supported as we see this to be extremely important. Jonathan
