Dell today expanded its fledgling line of computers using Intel's 45-nanometer Penryn technology with the release of the Precision T5400 and T7400. Both tower systems are designed for the new Xeon 5200 and 5400 quad-core processors and can use two of them for as many as eight cores in a single system -- this includes the range-topping 3.2GHz chips with a 1.6GHz front side bus, according to Dell. Each also boasts dual PCI Express 2.0 slots that can individually handle up to a Quadro FX 5600 card with 1.5GB of memory for the most intensive 3D work.

As the lower-cost system, the T5400 is capped at using Xeons with a 1.33GHz bus (up to a 3.16GHz processor) and uses as much as 32GB of memory spread across eight memory slots; it starts at $1,589 with a single quad-core, 2GHz Xeon, a 256MB Quadro NVS 290 for graphics, and an 80GB hard disk plus DVD reader for storage. The T7400 at $1,839 offers the same basic platform but allows up to the top 3.2GHz Xeon and sports a full 16 memory slots for a total 64GB. January options will add dual-core chips up to 3.4GHz and new 8GB memory sticks that will allow as much as 128GB of memory in the T7400, Dell says. Both Precision workstations ship next week.