HP's Z400 Workstation Runs The Tom's Hardware Gauntlet

[Guest]

We've recently put a lot of effort into designing a custom benchmark suite for testing workstation-class hardware. It's a work in progress, first used to test Intel's Xeon 5600-series CPUs. Today we have some results gleaned from HP's Z400 workstation.

HP's Z400 Workstation Runs The Tom's Hardware Gauntlet : Read more

 

[bitter]

So JF was right to say that HT should be disabled in some scenarios

 

[haplo602]

hmm ... I wonder if you could make a D3D/OGL comparison test in some 3D modeling software ? I don't actualy know if any of them supports both APIs.

BTW you dual PCIex16 comment is wrong. There were dual PCIex16 slots in HP workstations since xwX400 models (6400,8400,9400).

 

[Draven35]

Some of the other models have dual x16 slots... but they are rare in baseline models. At some point we'll look at how well an SLI config works in workstation OpenGL tests.

3dsMax uses Direct3D (and OpenGL), but prefers Direct3D (it is 'recommended' by Autodesk on my GTX 460-equipped primary machine...), but Maya does not, it requires OpenGL.

As for whether HT should be disabled? Still questionable. If you're doing animation, and have HT off, you'll gain some interactivity when working, but as soon as you need a test render you'll be losing time. If your 3D application does multithreaded interactiivty tasks, then you're better off with HT on- for instance, the VPR interactive shading mode in Lightwave 10. Its largely dependent on how your software responds to what, and hopefully we'll have more answers on that with the next workstation we look at.

 

[ares1214]

Nice cable managment...

 

[Draven35]

It came that way! The other models in the z-series have better cable management even, specially with the shrouds.

 

[HibyPrime]

Lets see.

[strike]2GB Ram - Not even close to be considered a usable workstation.[/strike] - Nevermind, I messed up. I didn't see the (x3)

250GB main/2TB raid 0 - raid 0 setups in workstations are used for scratch disks, and thats it - storage is too risky. 2x 250GB in raid 0 makes much more sense cost wise as you'll never use more than 500GB on a scratch disk, with a 1TB for temporary storage. I say temporary because a workstation is just that, once the work is done (and during) it's backed up and rarely used again.

Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium PCIe - Any Audio professional needing sound quality is going to be using almost exclusively external hardware. The analog outputs all anyone else is going to need.

Who ever chose the specs for this machine needs to be shot.

 

[MU_Engineer]

This was an interesting review, but the real machine to test would have been the dual-processor Z800. The big advantages of a workstation are better reliability and stability than a standard desktop and the ability to use multiple processors and more RAM than a typical desktop. Perhaps a Z400 vs. Z800 test would have been interesting as there were a mix of poorly-threaded and well-threaded applications in the test.

 

[warezme]

This machine is pathetic. Any decently configured OC'ed quadcore i7 will run circles around this thing, ugh.

 

[Draven35]

It was agreed to start with a z400... the workstation tests were actually developed on this machine, hence why it has a Gen 1 board. Mayhap we'll look at a z800 later.

Most video editors use a RAID array for their video files unless they are just editing DV. HD footage shot on a decent quality camera would quickly overwhelm your proposed 500GB array- the raw P2 footage alone for my film project was 350 GB, and that's before the scratch files generated for color correction and transition renders- and the P2 footage is pretty strongly compressed for semi-pro camera footage. (40 Mb/s) If you're editing uncompressed 1080 HD, you're dealing with 124 MB per second of video. With a larger array, a system like this could be set up for editing uncompressed HD with the simple addition of a BlackMagic Decklink in one of its HD flavors, or the HD version of the Avid Mojo if you prefer to work in something like Media Composer. With the transition of TV to HD, more and more projects are being finished for HD in an attempt to future-proof them- which has actually been going on for about five years before the transition. If you want to see something truly horrible, look at the data rates required for 2k or 4k playback...

HP doesn't sell their machine configured with any kind of professional audio interfaces. They submit their machines for certification by Avid, and the 'full' Pro Tools (Pro Tools HD) comes from Avid on a z800.The audio interface choice for the system was either the Creative card, or the onboard RealTek codec, because that's what HP had and could configure a system with.

You'll find a surprising number (like, most) audio guys including musicians these days working with a mix of software and hardware, and the mixing is done on a computer, not on external hardware. There are audio interfaces with two, four, six, eight and more inputs... my personal music workstation has eight analog inputs, plus ADAT and S/PDIF in. (Note, I need more like twice that in inputs.) You need all these input to capture multiple instruments on completely independent tracks simultaneously , so that they can be given separate effects and the mix can be adjusted on each track. (That's right, you can capture all those tracks at the same time.) Some of these audio interfaces are an internal card , some are an internal card plus an external breakout box (M-Audio Delta series, MOTU 2408, etc), and most are USB or firewire external (Presonus, TASCAM, Echo, Digidesign, Focusrite, et al) boxes with all the hardware located within it. In addition, many have PCI or PCIe DSP accelerator cards from UAD or TC electronic for effects processing and synthesis.

 

[cadder]

The big advantages of a workstation are better reliability and stability than a standard desktop

I'm not sure I understand this. A machine built with the best enthusiast-class hardware should be basically 100% reliable. The most unreliable part is the hard drive. This machine uses Seagate hard drives, probably the most unreliable brand of drives. This machine also uses an HP motherboard, and HP is below average in reliability in their retail products. Should we expect the workstation components to be better? As for stability, it's using the same OS that everybody else has access to.

All of our CAD machines here use i5/750 CPU's, aftermarket coolers, 8GB, Gigabyte motherboards, a Velociraptor or SSD for the boot drive, a WD Black for the storage drive, ATI FireGL video cards, Win7 Pro 64bit. The machines run at 3.5GHz 24/7 with no problems. I add 2 cooling fans to each case and that in conjunction with the aftermarket cooler keeps things running real cool.

 

[Draven35]

Before the 7200.11 problem, Seagates were widely regarded as the fastest and most reliable drives, and were the drives most often used in RAID arrays for high-end workstation work. (Look at the drives in an old Medea, SGI, Avid, etc RAID for media use- a large percentage of the time, they are Seagate drives.) Western Digitals were largely viewed as 'acceptable' and Maxtors were 'unreliable'. IBM drives were considered to be very reliable until the Deskstar problem. I've had several Maxtor drives fail on me, and a few Western Digitals, but my Seagate drives often have ended up removed and put on a shelf when they got to small for practical use rather than failing.

I'd be interested in seeing how the I5-750 compares with the Xeon used in this review (as well as the i7 that Chris used in the prior workstation comparison...)

 

[JohnA]

They needed a benchmark. They have one. You have to start somewhere, and the price was right.

I'm most interested in how the video needs have changed over the past few years. I do a lot of CAD/CAM, but the video card doesn't make much difference in most of the stuff I do, as long as it is a work station class.


As always, throwing in a standard rig with Non-FX video cards for comparison is a must.

 

[ecrenshaw]

I just got a Z800 with single Xeon 5620 processor, 8GB ram, and an ATI FirePro 7800 to replace my aging xw4400 that has 4GB ram and a Fire GL7200.

Autodesk Inventor screams on the new box. Load time is pretty quick...parts/assemblies load a bit quicker unless they have to be pulled of the network first (via Vault Manufacturing).

Had some year end money to replace the wx440 which is still a very solid machine. Plan to use the 'hardware at home' policy. HP has been making some really solid performers lately.

 

[tsnorquist]

For $3298.00... you'd think HP would hit the local Lowes up and get some zip ties & shrink tubing for that birds nest inside.

Just saying....

 

[casey_souder]

Great Article!

If you are looking to add more scientific programs to the benchmark suite, I would look at LANDIS-II. It is a forest dynamics model developed by the University of Wisconsin and the US Forest Service. It can be downloaded from www.landis-ii.org. If you decide to add it to your suite and need help creating a benchmark test I would be more then happy to help.

 

[mc tanza]

I think the DAW bench can't be taken seriously. It's so flawed and limited, it doesn't represent real world usage. your custom test is probably more realistic, altough it tests a different kind of workload.

Anyway, using asio4all and a Creative card is hilarious. I do understand that's what you had on hand though.

On a different note, I must agree that using a RAID 0 setup on a workstation class machine is a big no-no for almost any usage. It's kind of suicidal...

 

[digitalrazoe]

To use a car analogy and were traveling over a rough road while pulling a trailer... would you take a Corvette or Ferrari ? No you would take something with clearance and built tough. a good ol Truck preferably a 4x4 3/4 ton or jeep that has the muscle to get the job done. Will it dust a sports car of the line in a 1/4 mile ? Nope but that's just it you want reliability when you are crunching many polygons or massive tracks of audio. The last thing you want is a data error that could render your hard work useless. hence things like ECC REG memory or just ECC will make data more reliable. Yes you can build workstation class performance with enthusiast parts. But it will take one good kernel panic for you to wish you still had that old dual PII Kayak of yesteryear. as for cable management; as long as the airflow is good I could care less. Just get my mix, movie creation or new way of air travel designed with out wondering if my overclock is going to cook my goose in the morning.

 

[dcc]

I am really happy to see a benchmark for workstations start to appear. For my company, I chose to have our 3D artists on Dell 9000's with i7-920's and NVIDIA 260's. The machines were $1k and have been stable and productive using Maya, Zbrush and Photoshop. I just couldn't see the price/performance ratio on Xeon CPU's and the Quadro cards really don't do anything that a 3D animation program needs - anyone know what it is about a quadro that is unique?

I would really like to see consumer chips vs. their workstation counterparts, hyperthreading on vs. off, ECC vs. non-ECC, quadro vs. gforce in comparisons of rendering and image processing using industry standard applications - maya, max, mentalray, vray, renderman, Photoshop, After Effects, Nuke. That benchmark would help me and many other studios determine where to invest our hardware dollars.

 

[Draven35]

DAWBench is what it is, and works reasonably well, though it definitely isn't any kind of realistic workload, and takes awhile to run the test. The problem with any given DAW test is twofold: 1: something quantifiable and repeatable (mind you, running a decent CPU tach instead of the one built into the software may be good enough for our purposes) and 2: licensing issues with VSTs. I have alot of VSTs that i could have used but the demo versions of many of them do a whole 'random bursts of noise' thing- which on several of them causes a drop in CPU usage that basically invalidates its use in any cpu tach based testing.

I'm also looking into getting an external (likely USB) audio interface that is a known good performer to use on testing workstations.

And yes, likely the RAID array would be a RAID 5... but i didnt have the drive bays for it. When i started the tests, i was doing them under WinXP x64 and Vista x64, then added Win7 x64. Hence why, ig you look in the photos, there are labelled system drives- i had three boot drives.

 

[Draven35]

DCC, i couldn't find any tests that would show the difference of ECC memory.

 

[Guest]

Cadder - this is a commerical machine, not a retail machine... Show me a retail HP product that offers a 3/3/3 warranty on it... The comparision between a retail and commerical product, the relability, is like the difference between night and day.

 

[dEAne]

Yes this is for gaming PC. The specs are good for Workstation.