New workstation

[JuhaHo]

I'm planning to purchase a replacement for my six year old HP Z640 workstation. It will be reduced to be a render server replacing 12 year old HP Z600.

From my current Z640 workstation I will take quadro P5000, HP 1TB turbodrive, project HDD and 64 MB of RAM to the new workstation. At the moment I'm doing comparison between HP Z6 and Z8 workstations. I will buy the the new workstation with single processor and without without graphics card. During it's life cycle I will do two major upgrades being the 2nd processor and a new graphics card. Maybe I will someday also replace the current Turbodrive with Quad Pro Turbo drive.

Any thoughts? HP Z6 or Z8? Which processor?

[JuhaHo]

I got two suggestion - both based on HP Z6 model. There is two different processor configurations:

1. Intel® Xeon® W-3245 Processor: Not scalable
2. Intel® Xeon® Gold 6128 Processor: Scalable

It seems that the upper is faster than dual processor configuration of the other one.This means, the more expensive W-3245 will be cheaper and faster even after the 2nd processor option is used on option Gold 6128. I will get the exact pricing later. The desired pricing would be 3 250 - 5 000 € excl. VAT and without graphics card.

Do we have V-Ray speed tests for these? Any thoughts?

[JuhaHo]

So far I haven't got any quotations for the new workstation. I understand that serving one man bands aren't exactly the top priority.

In the meantime I made Vray CPU benchmark test with my current 6 year old workstation and scored 9 410.
https://benchmark.chaos.com/v5/vray/23798

The new workstation has to be at least as fast with single processor configuration as the current workstation with dual processor configuration.

[Morne]

Add your desired CPU in the benchmark search results, specify how many of them, then set the results to display the average instead of the max

The results will show that the Intel® Xeon® W-3245 Processor with 32 threads scores 14 682

By comparison, an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with 32 threads scores 20 346

(higher score is better)

[JuhaHo]

Add your desired CPU in the benchmark search results, specify how many of them, then set the results to display the average instead of the max

The results will show that the Intel® Xeon® W-3245 Processor with 32 threads scores 14 682

By comparison, an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with 32 threads scores 20 346

(higher score is better)

Thanks Morne,

I saw the W-3245 test results, but I noticed, the score was generated in Mac OS. Are those results comparable with Windows workstations? The disadvantage of W series is that those are not scalable, So I can place only one into two processor workstation.

I have the full list of HP Z series processors from where I selected these:

• Intel® Xeon® Gold 6226R
• Intel® Xeon® Gold 5220R processor
• Intel® Xeon® Gold 5218R processor
• Intel® Xeon® Gold 5218 processor
• Intel® Xeon® Silver 4216 processor
• Intel® Xeon® Silver 4214R processor

When I get the price for least one of those, I can place the order. From that point it takes 2 - 3 months or even more to get the workstation built and delivered here.

[Morne]

If you have that kind of money, then just get a Threadripper 3990x with 128 threads and be done with it
Its scores a massive 54 886

[JuhaHo]

It seems, only Intel Xeon processors are available for HP Z-series workstations. Why HP Z-series? I like to have modularity. This means, whatever I buy, it has to be compatible with all of my current workstations. Each of the workstations has a different role. At the moment I'm replacing my 3DS Max workstation and will reduce the old one to be a rendering server after removing some essential components. I've been using HP workstations since 20 years and before that I had Silicon Graphics Visual Workstations.

[JuhaHo]

It's not definitely easy to purchase a workstation here in periphery. So far I haven't been able to persuade not a single offer for workstation. One man band is too small for B2B salespersons and home appliance store folks laugh me out of the store, when I tell my requirements for workstation. In my case there's not much I can say or do to get a workstation sold to me. I guess I have to take whatever I get and hope it's not worse than my current 6 year old workhorse.

[JuhaHo]

A little update. I have contacted few computer stores and weeks ago I got some promises that I will get quotation for a workstation. So far the amount of quotations is zero - frustrating, very frustrating.

[glorybound]

I wonder if we are getting into the realm that it doesn't matter anymore. I mean, are we talking about milliseconds? I went from 36 cores to my Alienware x17 R1, and I haven't had any reason to take the 36 core beast out of storage (I moved). So I paid a ton for this laptop, hoping it would get me by for the month I was relocating, and it has become my daily driver. If you are doing thousands of frames, yes it adds up. However, for my stills, I chose portability over speed. A grayscale might take a minute on the laptop, which would have taken 45 seconds on my workstation, but that doesn't make much of a difference to me. For final color stills... I let things bake for an hour and it is done, on the laptop or the desktop.

[JuhaHo]

I'm not talking about milliseconds, I'm talking about days or weeks. I have deployed 3-4 workstations for my projects including one laptop.

As an example, I got request earlier this week, that I should remove one part or rather assembly from an animation model, which I thought it's successfully finished. I told that it will require some work. First I need to rebuild my fluid simulation model without the dummy geometry belonging to that assembly. That will change the total volume of the fluid, which means I need to do a lot of iterations to get the liquid surface to the correct level. One iteration round will take about one week. When it's finished, I need to recreate the related particle simulations. This will take quite a few iteration rounds before the model is ready to be sent to rendering queue. The renderings will take a week or two. I'm aiming to reduce the throughput in the weeks when I get the new workstation.

As I stated it's not easy to get someone to sell a workstation that is at least as fast as my current six year old workhorse.

The only workstation that's faster than my current and seems to be available here is this Lenovo. I don't know if my current HP Quadro P5000 graphics card is compatible with that Lenovo (graphics card not included). Unfortunately the only language option besides Finnish seem to be Russian.
https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/prod...-Win-10-Pro-64

[JuhaHo]

It looks like, I have to postpone the purchase for half a year. I'll see if we have more choices back then.

[JuhaHo]

Spkeaking oh HP workstations,

I think they should re-brand their workstation product line for very obvious reasons.

[JuhaHo]

My suggestion would be replacing the letter Z with Letter Å (or å). That would be logical, since it's the next in the alphabet after Z.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

A little update. I have contacted few computer stores and weeks ago I got some promises that I will get quotation for a workstation. So far the amount of quotations is zero - frustrating, very frustrating.

Maingear seems to be able to deliver at the moment, specially if you are in the US. They are based in New Jersey, their prices and build quality is great!

Best,
Muhammed