Time for a new workstation...

[Joeman]

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!!

[stek]

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!!

27" i7 iMac, I have one it's lush. 16gb ram ATM, 32gb soon.....

Ideal for Excel for the expenses and Word for the Invoice........

What other business-related work will it do?

[AtW]

i7 and Xeon are waste of money.

Get overclocked i5 from Overclockers UK - they sell good tulip!

[Joeman]

Not an apple fan, so thats iMac's out the window...
Will be used for development work, and a bit of trading, so dual screens is a must.
Keep the ideas rolling in...

[PAH]

Sandybridge i5-2500k (unlocked for easy overclocking, though currently mine is bog standard as it's fast enough as is).

Mobos come with 4 ram slots supporting up to 32gb, though 4 x 4gb is cheap as chips at the moment and plenty for most uses including running multiple virtual machines.

Some mobos also come with integrated Intel HD 2000/3000 graphics, supporting dual screen (DVI-D and HDMI outputs, use a HDMI-DVI adaptor if your monitor doesn't have HDMI) and capable of HD playback.

Then just add a decent size SSD and you're laughing.

Best bang per buck guaranteed.

[doodab]

Some mobos also come with integrated Intel HD 2000/3000 graphics, supporting dual screen (DVI-D and HDMI outputs, use a HDMI-DVI adaptor if your monitor doesn't have HDMI) and capable of HD playback.

Technically the graphics are on the CPU, so it's the CPU you choose which decides whether you get the better HD3000 graphics or not, but the motherboard does need to enable them by using the right chipset and having the right outputs. The Z68 chipset seems to be the best bet currently.

+1 for the SSD. Absolutely a must have.

[VectraMan]

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?

[PAH]

The Z68 chipset seems to be the best bet currently.

Yes, forgot to mention that. The Z68 offers best of both worlds compared to the other two mobo types (P67 and H67) that support Sandybridge, regarding overclocking and features.

You're right about the cpu having integrated gfx but still need the mobo to have the right ports as some don't have any and some don't have HDMI or DisplayPort so only one digital output (DVI).

[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.

[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.