Should Your Next System Be a Workstation?
Photograph: Marc SimonNot long ago, workstations were far different from PCs. These Unix-based systems ran on proprietary hardware platforms and were largely reserved for companies with deep pockets and a need for ultrahigh performance on specific applications. Today's workstations are more an evolutionary offshoot of their PC brethren than a different animal, sharing much of the same hardware and software.
What separates a workstation from a mere PC? According to Vince Dougherty, workstation seller and owner of Wine Country Computers in Healdsburg, California, "We sell workstations to people with very demanding, very specific needs, like architectural and engineering firms that work with complex 3D models and animation. Workstations more than make up for the extra cost with speed and reliability."
A typical entry-level unit, the Xw4300 Workstation from HP uses either a 32-bit Intel Pentium 4 processor or a 64-bit, dual-core Pentium D CPU. Its subdued gray-and-black case lacks the adolescent flash of some expensive gaming systems; inside and out, it's all business. Here's what separates the Xw4300 and other workstations from standard, everyday PCs.
Performance: Squeezing every last ounce of performance out of a PC means having high-powered hardware. In our $4200 review configuration, the Xw4300 came with a Pentium D CPU and 2GB of RAM; HP also offers more advanced (and expensive) workstations that carry Intel's Xeon or AMD's Opteron processors.
The Xw4300 supports up to 8GB of RAM but requires a 64-bit OS, such as Windows XP Professional X64 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation, to use more than 4GB. Down the road you can expect heavy-duty workstation applications to move to 64-bit sooner than average desktop software because they're most in need of, and benefit most from, more memory.
High-speed bus: You won't find any PCI expansion slots on most of today's workstations, just the newer PCI Express x16 and x1 slots. The Xw4300 also has a PCI Express x8 slot with the bandwidth to run a SCSI host adapter for 15,000-rpm SCSI hard drives.
Fast and stable 3D graphics: Graphics board makers tune high-end consumer cards for fast game play, not stability. HP offers the Xw4300 with a number of expensive professional graphics cards, including models from ATI's FireGL and NVidia's Quadro lines. These cards supply proven stability plus hardware acceleration for the OpenGL API that 3D graphics and animation professionals use. In addition, the key software vendors test and certify the cards to work with their applications.
Fast and safe hard drives: Workstations also must be reliable, as busy professionals don't have time to recover from a hard-drive crash. The Xw4300 comes with two hard drives and supports up to four drives with RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10.
High-end ECC RAM: Computers using multiple gigabytes of RAM are more likely to experience random data errors that can result in corrupt data, buggy software performance, and system crashes. That's why many mission-critical workstations use the more expensive Error-Correcting Code RAM, which stores a 7- or 8-bit code with every 32 or 64 bits of data to identify and fix random errors in the data.
ISV certification: Buyers want to know that a workstation will work with their software before they buy. Leading workstation vendors submit their systems to independent software vendors (ISVs) for certification and maintain a list of ISV certifications. The Xw4300's ISV certifications include Adobe's Photoshop CS, Premiere Pro, and After Effects, as well as Alias's Studio Tools and Discreet's 3D StudioMax.
Superior warranty: A workstation should come with a good warranty. HP provides a standard three-year warranty on parts, labor, and on-site service for the Xw4300.
Contributing Editor Kirk Steers writes PC World's Hardware Tips column and is the author of the new book PC Upgrading and Troubleshooting QuickSteps (Osborne Press, 2005). He was once an analyst in the PC World Test Center.
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