Reply to: Time for a new workstation...

[Platypus]

Well I've just upgraded my trusty old HP Pavilion. I bought a system from Scan after seeing several recommendations on here.

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2700K CPU @ 3.50GHz 7.8
Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB 7.8
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 7.6
Gaming graphics 7.6
Primary hard disk 7.9

Overall 7.6

It shipped overclocked, but after a couple of crashes already (in two days) I've reverted to the non-overclocked BIOS settings and touch wood all seems well now. After this experience I'd never go overclocked again.

It was either this or a Dell Precision Workstation. I went for the Scan primarily because there was an SSD option.

And I went for tons of memory so I could run some VMs. Although no doubt someone will say "should have got a Xeon if using VMs". Oh well.

[TheFaQQer]

Happy either way, budget = whatever it costs to get a good machine, but tigth wad side of my brain would limit to about 600quid (without monitors)

I'd play about with the configuration tool on pcspecialist and see what they would build one for - then see what else there is out there.

[Sysman]

My trusty old ASUS M50 Laptop is a Core2Duo 2.5GHz, 4GB ram, and i upgraded to SSD.
its a few years old now, but still going strong. As you say, the SSD upgrade was very noticeable!!

It has a "windows Experience Index" of 4.8, because its let down by its graphics card, but the full score are below...

Processor: 6.1
Memory: 6.1
Graphics: 4.8
Gaming Graphics: 5.9
Primary hard disk: 7.8

How do newer machines compare??

18 month old dual core AMD with "shared memory" on board graphics chip, 2.9 GHz:

Processor: 6.4
Memory: 5.9
Graphics: 3.7
Gaming Graphics: 3.5
Primary hard disk: 5.9

Since the ratings only go up to 7.9, your disk is at near as makes no difference the max possible. I think it's unlikely that 5.9 (my SATA disk) versus 7.9 (your SSD) gives a meaningful comparison in terms of work getting done.

I don't really give a monkeys about the graphics. I don't use this system for gaming and can do nicely without all the Aero eye candy.

[Joeman]

What's your budget?

Pre-built or Build Your Own?

Happy either way, budget = whatever it costs to get a good machine, but tigth wad side of my brain would limit to about 600quid (without monitors)

[Scrag Meister]

ok, time for a new workstation.. what should i buy??
Dell are the old favourite, any others i should consider??
CPU - i5, i7, xeon?? so many choices!!

What's your budget?

Pre-built or Build Your Own?

[Churchill]

I used pcspecialist.co.uk for my last one, and specced it exactly how I wanted it.

Rather than going Intel i7, I went with a 6-core AMD chip instead, which I (and the CUK massive) thought might give better performance for using multiple virtual machines concurrently.

I cannibalised a few bits from the old machine - it already had two fairly new graphics cards, and I moved over three of the hard drives - to reduce costs a bit, but got a decent processor, new hard drive, lots of RAM etc.

WHS.

6-core Bulldozer + new M/B, case, ram, 2 new HDs

Bought cheap 1GB graphics card, swapped out my expensive(ish) graphics card from the old PC and built my new PC, with the old bits and new graphics card I built a perfectly reasonable PC for my Father-in-law.

[Joeman]

The Core2Duo will be good enough for most tasks as not much causes the cpu to be the bottleneck.
....
For most tasks the upgrade to SSD was much more noticeable.

My trusty old ASUS M50 Laptop is a Core2Duo 2.5GHz, 4GB ram, and i upgraded to SSD.
its a few years old now, but still going strong. As you say, the SSD upgrade was very noticeable!!

It has a "windows Experience Index" of 4.8, because its let down by its graphics card, but the full score are below...

Processor: 6.1
Memory: 6.1
Graphics: 4.8
Gaming Graphics: 5.9
Primary hard disk: 7.8

How do newer machines compare??

[PAH]

Looks like Overclockers have some good bundles. If only I could think of a reason. My 4 year old Core 2 Duo Dell Dimension is barely ticking over for what I use it for.

The Core2Duo will be good enough for most tasks as not much causes the cpu to be the bottleneck.

I was a little sad to see my Core2Duo demoted to spare kit after years of being rock solid. The following is what made me upgrade:

1. The mobo could only support 2gb ram which isn't much these days.

2. I wanted to do more with virtualisation so more cores made more sense, and a mobo that could support lots more ram.

3. Video encoding is the only other area where I see a dramatic improvement following the upgrade.

For most tasks the upgrade to SSD was much more noticeable.

[doodab]

I built a HTPC with an i3-530, the cheapest of the first generation core i CPUs, and that will drive 2 displays quite happily. I don't think you need a separate graphics card anymore unless you want more displays or you're doing something which needs hardcore 3D acceleration.

[d000hg]

I guess I'm not the only one who assumes "onboard" means "crap".

Indeed - and they certainly used to be, but the new generation on the i5/7 chips are a just that, a new generation.

I write 3D apps and find the newest integrated GPUs from Intel are as fast as discrete GPUs (nVisia/ATI) from a couple of generations back. It IS all relative though, a top-end GPU might be 100X faster than an integrated chip, but GPUs have been beating Moore's Law.

[VectraMan]

There's absolutely no point doing so if you don't play modern games or work in 3D graphics (or CUDA). These integrated graphics are 10X better than the Intel chipsets we all used to have i our Dell workstations a few years back - they are 'underpowered' only relative to the hard-to-understand-how powerful-they-really-are modern GPUs.

I guess I'm not the only one who assumes "onboard" means "crap".

Looks like Overclockers have some good bundles. If only I could think of a reason. My 4 year old Core 2 Duo Dell Dimension is barely ticking over for what I use it for.

[TheFaQQer]

I used pcspecialist.co.uk for my last one, and specced it exactly how I wanted it.

Rather than going Intel i7, I went with a 6-core AMD chip instead, which I (and the CUK massive) thought might give better performance for using multiple virtual machines concurrently.

I cannibalised a few bits from the old machine - it already had two fairly new graphics cards, and I moved over three of the hard drives - to reduce costs a bit, but got a decent processor, new hard drive, lots of RAM etc.

[d000hg]

ok, time for a new workstation.. what should i buy??
Dell are the old favourite, any others i should consider??
CPU - i5, i7, xeon?? so many choices!!

What do you want to DO on your PC? If it's just writing your invoices and emails, splash out £400 for any old POS

Surely most people would go for a dedicated GPU on a workstation anyway.

There's absolutely no point doing so if you don't play modern games or work in 3D graphics (or CUDA). These integrated graphics are 10X better than the Intel chipsets we all used to have i our Dell workstations a few years back - they are 'underpowered' only relative to the hard-to-understand-how powerful-they-really-are modern GPUs.

[doodab]

Surely most people would go for a dedicated GPU on a workstation anyway.

How do Xeons stack up aginst i7s? The likes of the Dell Precisions seem to be all Xeons, without the option of an i7 or i5. I wonder if it's just a kind of snobbery, i.e. Xeons for business and i7s for gamers?

I think it's partly branding but there are some technical differences as well. Obviously if you want dual socket or ECC memory you have to go Xeon. The single socket ones all have the VPro management features which aren't available on the "K" type i7s and i5s. I doubt that is particularly relevant to you or I but corporate IT departments might get excited about it. The same applies to VT-d which only seems to be useful in a server running a bare metal hypervisor like ESX or Xen.

The main benefit of the Xeon E3 seems to be that it has 4 extra PCIe lanes when used with the C206 chipset although in practice there only seems to be one motherboard available that uses it, aside from that most of them have the 8MB cache + hyperthreading and there is more choice of clock speeds, with and without integrated graphics (which uses a bit less power) and so on, so for example you can get a 3.2GHz one with 8MB cache + HT for £50 less than the i7-2600 and all you have sacrificed is 200Mhz of clock speed.

The downside is that they aren't as overclockable, if that's what you want to do it's i5/i7 all the way.

[PAH]

Surely most people would go for a dedicated GPU on a workstation anyway.

Depends on whether you want to play games on it. The integrated graphics is as good as most budget gfx cards anyway so no need to spend the extra unless desired.

With the Z68 you can plug in a gfx card and switch between integrated and discrete to save power when not playing games.

The only limitations I've found with the integrated is it only supports two monitors (though I've read it may be possible to add a 3rd using display port but I don't have that on my mobo, only DVI-D and HDMI) and I'm currently thinking of going triple monitor. 2 x 21.5" 1080 stacked one above the other, and my existing Dell 24" in portrait mode alongside.

The other limitation is only 1920x1200 resolution is supported, though again it sounds like DisplayPort may support higher. Only an issue if going for a 27" 2560x1440 or 30" 2560x1600 monitor that requires dual-link DVI.

I've got a spare gfx card from my old Core2Duo setup lying around so need to check if it will work alongside the integrated gfx at the same time, so can attach two monitors via the integrated and one via the discrete.