Latest Desktop Workstation

[Amtronics]

Hello,

I am looking for Latest workstation by HP. Which will support high end gaming, coding and design works.

Which will be  the best desktop workstation? kindly guide.

[iMaxx]

The workstations are not designed with gaming in mind, however, they will knock them out of the ballpark if configured properly.

I've been using the Z4xx series at home for gaming and everything else I've needed with little complaints.

I think the desiding factor is 'what are you going to be using this for most?'

You can buy these units without graphics cards as you won't be wanting a Quadro card for gaming and coding tasks won't care. However, depending on the design programs, the Quadro card may be what you want. (Quadro cards can be put into "game developer mode" which allows them to funciton as GForce cards... but Quadro's cost a lot more.)

That being said, GForce cards cannot be SLi'd in Workstations.

Have you looked into the Omen X if  gaming is more your focus?

[MtothaJ]

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@iMaxx wrote:

The workstations are not designed with gaming in mind, however, they will knock them out of the ballpark if configured properly.

I've been using the Z4xx series at home for gaming and everything else I've needed with little complaints.

I think the desiding factor is 'what are you going to be using this for most?'

You can buy these units without graphics cards as you won't be wanting a Quadro card for gaming and coding tasks won't care. However, depending on the design programs, the Quadro card may be what you want. (Quadro cards can be put into "game developer mode" which allows them to funciton as GForce cards... but Quadro's cost a lot more.)

That being said, GForce cards cannot be SLi'd in Workstations.

Have you looked into the Omen X if  gaming is more your focus?

---

Its an interesting point you made that GForce cards will not run in SLI in the Z workstations. I was not aware of this, but some very quick research seems to validate this - even though with a 40 lane Xeon E5 processor there are more than enough PCIe lanes to run full speed SLI  it seems that the technology was not licenced from Nvidia and GTX SLI will simply not work. As you mentioned Quadro SLI will work fine.

As for the GTX SLI, I do not really think it is such a big loss. Games are rarely optimised for SLI and the result is a lot of microstutter etc. One is much better of with a single more powerful graphics card, especially since with e.g. the Z420 with the 600W PSU two more powerful graphics cards would probably be close or exceed the power limit of the PSU. Granted, there are the adapters allowing the use of a more powerful generic PSU but it all seems like an unnecessary complication.

As for gaming my present Z420 config is:

- E5-1650 v1 (hoping to upgrade to a v2 1650 or 1660 when prices drop)

- 64GB RAM

- GTX 1070

- AOC 144hz G-sync 1080p monitor

- Samsung 950 Pro NVMe 256GB boot drive + WD Blue 1TB HDD

- Asus Xonar DG soundcard (incoming)

I can safely say that the above config easily outperforms a Z170 Core i7- 6700k build running at stock which I was previously using with the same SSD and GPU. WIth the i7 6700k on CPU intensive games I found that the frame rates were at times higher than with the E5-1650 however they were subject to much larger variations - sometimes they would dip a lot lower than I would have liked. WIth the E5-1650 they are generally a lot more stable. Plus, more and more games are now making use of more than 4 cores. The i7 6700k and i7 7700k with the hyperthreading and much higher clock speeds go some way to compensate this, but you can't really go wrong with 6 real cores, especially since from what I see even with all cores utilised, my E5-1650 seems to be running more or less at a constant 3.5Ghz which even by todays standards is still more than enough for the vast majority of games.

[BambiBoomZ]

Amtromics,

The key features to high performance in gaming and 3D modeling iare essentially the same: 1. the CPU single-thread performance - in general relative to clock speed, 2. the total calculation cycles / unit time of the CPU, and 3. the CPU's /GPU's combined ability to place polygon and apply attributes such as textures. A game is not dissimilar to navigating a 3ds or Maya model.  However, workstations in a content creation role will use GPUs with  drivers that more completely render each frame for image quality, whereas consumer / gaming GPU's concentrate on high frame rates with a "good enough" approach to rendering.

Workstations are, in general, focussed on these attributes and with the bonus of high reliability under long-term system stress.

Most games and all the 3D modeling programs that I know are highly single-threaded. There are some games that assign some complex entities to different cores, e.g. each car  or character runs on a seperate core.  Windows does have some thread distribution.  When modeling in Sketchup, Task Manager / Performance shows  a z420 /E5-1660 v2 having activity in six of the twelve threads. If you are going to be running mutiple VM's in code development, it's possible to assign a VM to a dedicated thread.

Overall, a 4-core CPU will have a higher single-thread performance than 6-core at a lower cost. because it's easier to bin a Xeon to a 4-core with the required higher clock speeds.  A very useful list in this regard is the Passmark CPU Benchmarks CPU "Mega List" that displays the Single Thread Mark and Single Thread Value which is the reltaionship of the single thread score to the cost. 

1.  A search = "Xeon E5" + setting Single Thread Mark in order descending shows that the currently available Xeon E5 (1600 series V3 and V4) with the highest Single Thread Mark is the E5-1680 v4  8-core @ 3.4 /4.0Ghz with a score of 2201.  An 8-core, CPU is not necessary but this acts as the reference. ($2,272)

2. The highest single Thread Mark for a currently available Xeon E5 4-core is the E5-1620 v4 @ 3.5 /3.8Ghz with a CPU mark of 10036 and single thread of 2120.  ($310)

3. For i7, the i7-7700K  4-core @ 4.2 /4.5GHz is the overall top performer at a CPU Mark 12215 and Single Thread = 2251. 

4. For Xeon E3"+ setting Single Thread Mark in order descending shows the Xeon E3-1285 v3 4-core @ 3.6 /4.0GHz with a CPU of 10252 and Single Thread of 2340. ($350)

System 1: consider:

HP Z240 Tower Workstation L8T12AV_1

Hide customized details

• HP 3/3/3 Tower Warranty
• 32GB DDR4-2133 nECC (4x8GB) Unbuffered RAM
• Windows 10 Pro 64 - HP recommends Windows 10 Pro.
• No Graphics option (GT0 processors)
• HP USB Business Slim Keyboard
• No Microsoft Office Pre-Loaded Software
• 9.5mm Slim SuperMulti DVDRW 1st Optical Disc Drive
• Operating System Load to SATA
• HP Z240 Workstation Country Kit
• HP Z240 Tower Workstation
• HP USB Optical Mouse
• 256 GB HP Z Turbo Drive G2 TLC PCIe SSD
• HP Z240 TWR 280W 90 percent efficiency Chassis
• HP Single Unit (Tower) Packaging
• ENERGY STAR Qualified Configuration
• 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 1st Hard Drive
• Intel® Xeon® E3-1280 v5 (3.7 GHz, up to 4 GHz with Intel

$2324.32

Then add to this system, a GTX 1070, about $400-450, or GTX 1080, or GTX 1080 Ti

System 2:  For greater memory bandwidth, potential to upgrade to a  processor having up to 22-cores (E5-2600 v4), more RAM memory:

HP Z440 Workstation F5W13AV_1

Hide customized details

• HP Processor Air Cooling Kit
• HP Single Unit Packaging
• HP Z440 Microsoft Windows Workstation
• 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 1st Hard Drive
• HP Z440 Country Kit
• No Integrated Graphics
• Operating System Load to SATA/SAS
• HP USB Keyboard
• Slim SuperMulti DVDRW SATA 1st Optical Disc Drive
• HP 3/3/3 Warranty
• 32GB DDR4-2133 (4x8GB) Registered RAM
• HP USB Optical Mouse
• HP Z440 700W 90 Percent Efficient Chassis
• Windows 10 Pro 64 - HP recommends Windows 10 Pro.
• Intel(R) Xeon(R) E5-1630v3 3.70GHz 10MB 2133 4C CPU
• HP Z4 Fan and Front Card Guide Kit
• 256 GB HP Z Turbo Drive G2 PCIe SSD

$2,965.56  + GTX 1070 or GTX 1080 (about $600 - $700) 

You didn't mention a budget, but there is always this route:

HP Z440 Minitower WorkStation PC Xeon E5-1630 V3 3.70GHz 8GB RAM 1TB DVD+RW W7P   > $799.99 or offer 

+RAM to 64GB + GTX 1080

The much better cost /performance ratio of that system can redirect the budget towards the maximum 64GB of RAM and  the extremely fast GTX 1080 (about $600 - $700). The extraordinary performance of the GTX 1080 provides among the very highest speed performance in 3D applications.

In Passmark Performance Test baselines, there is not a z440 with the exact specification but a z440 / E5-1630 v3 / 32GB RAM / GTX 1070 / Micron M600 512GB system:

[ Passmark Rating = 4546 / CPU= 10390 / 2D= 695 / 3D= 12754 / Mem= 2611  / Disk= 3858]  [11.8.16]

GPU:  The GeForce GTX 1080 in an HP z440 can produce a Passmark G3D Rating of up to 13079 (With E5-1680 v3).  If that can't run a game, nothing will!

Disk: The Samsung SM951 256GB NVME, the basis of the HP Z Turbo Drive, produces a disk rating of 10353.

Overall. given the variety of applications for the proposed system, as LGA2011-3 Xeon E5-1600 system can have up to 8-cores (14 cores for Xeon E5-2600 v3) with 40 PCIe lanes, 68 GB/s maximum memory bandwidth, and 768GB of RAM instead of the Xeon E3-1200 v5 4-core,16 PCIe, 64GB RAM , and 34.1 GB/s maximum memory bandwidth Xeon E5 v3 or v4, the Xeon E5 system is going to have a better performance and long-term potential.

Cheers,

BambiBoomZ

Cheers,

BambiBoomZ

CAD / 3D Modeling / Graphic Design:

HP z420 (2015) (Rev 3) > Xeon E5-1660 v2 (6-core @ 3.7 / 4.0GHz)  / 32GB DDR3 -1866 ECC RAM  / Quadro K4200 (4GB) / Samsung SM951 M.2 256GB AHCI + Intel 730 480GB (9SSDSC2BP480G4R5) + Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX  1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > 600W PSU> > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit > Logitech z2300 2.1 speakers > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H  (2560 X 1440)
[ Passmark Rating = 5581 > CPU= 14046 / 2D= 838 / 3D= 4694 / Mem= 2777 / Disk= 11559]  [6.12.16]

Analysis / Simulation / Rendering:

HP z620 (2012) (Rev 3) 2X Xeon E5-2690 (8-core @ 2.9 / 3.8GHz) / 64GB DDR3-1600 ECC reg) / Quadro K2200 (4GB) + Tesla M2090 (6GB) / HP Z Turbo Drive (256GB) + Samsung 850 Evo 250GB + Seagate Constellation ES.3 (1TB) / Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe sound card / 800W / Windows 7 Professional 64-bit >  Logitech z313 2.1 speakers > HP 2711x  (27"  1980 X 1080)
[ Passmark System Rating= 5675 / CPU= 22625 / 2D= 815 / 3D = 3580 / Mem = 2522 / Disk = 12640 ] 9.25.16
[ Cinebench R15: OpenGL= 119.23 fps / CPU = 2209 cb / Single core 130 cb / MP Ratio 16.84x] 10.31.16