Sizing up new high-end machines from HP, Apple
Last week, I attended a press event in Los Angeles hosted by Hewlett-Packard's workstation business unit. Hewlett-Packard was preparing for this week's announcement of three new Z-series workstation models: the Z400, Z600, and Z800.
HP briefed the reporters and analysts with all the key details of the products (the speeds and feeds, as we say), took us to visit a couple of HP's key customers in the area, and hosted presentations by software partners and more customers.
The new HP Z-Series workstations.
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)The workstations are very nice, especially the Z600 and Z800: high-quality dual-processor systems based on Intel's newest Xeon 5500-series processors with specific adaptations to distinguish them from ordinary PCs. Even the Z400, though based on a more basic PC-like design, uses a single Xeon processor and provides two 16-lane PCI Express Gen2 slots.
The customer visits were well chosen: one at BMW Designworks and another at DreamWorks, the movie studio that just released Monsters vs. Aliens.
BMW Designworks actually assisted with the industrial design of the new HP workstations. They're handsome machines, but not exactly pretty--certainly not in the way Apple's Mac Pro is.
More importantly, however, the HP-BMW design is functionally superior. In about the same case size as the Mac Pro, HP's Z800 has room for more RAM, more expansion cards, and more disk drives. BMW also worked handles into the design, and they work better than Apple's.
The difference in RAM is quite substantial. It isn't just about the slots (eight in the Mac Pro, twelve in the Z800)--but even more in the fact that HP supports 16GB dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs), while Apple's machine goes only up to 4GB per slot. That's 192GB for the HP and 32GB for the Mac.
To be fair, HP is merely promising to offer 16GB DIMMs by the end of 2009; you can't get them today. Apple rarely preannounces anything, so it's possible that the Mac Pro will support more RAM by then, but HP's advantage in slot count should keep it on top.
More RAM can often give more performance than a faster CPU, especially in memory-hungry engineering applications. If the software overflows the physical memory and must start using virtual memory, performance can plummet.
These are very nice machines. But they're also expensive. The Z800 starts at less than $2,000 (actually a good bit cheaper than the Mac Pro's entry price), but most buyers will aim higher. In fact, it's no big deal to spend $10,000 or more on a high-end workstation.
Does that seem like a lot of money to spend on a PC for business use at a time when many businesses are struggling? Quite the opposite, I think.
The truth is, the cost of a superior PC is almost trivial, compared with the value it can generate in the hands of a highly skilled designer.
HP tried to make this point in its presentations at the event, but it was very conservative in its figures. First, it assumed that the total cost per employee (including salary, benefits, office space, management overhead, etc.) was just $60 per hour, which is very low. Second, it shouldn't have been using a cost model at all!
The more useful basis for this analysis is revenue per employee, which can easily exceed $250 per hour for the kind of workers who can make effective use of a high-price workstation.
For an employee generating this kind of value, a $10,000 workstation justifies its purchase remarkably quickly. Even if the employee's productivity improves just 10 percent, the payback period is a mere 10 weeks.
It's worth thinking about what it takes to generate a 10 percent improvement in overall productivity. It isn't just a matter of computer performance, but performance helps. These new HP workstations are much faster than the older models, due to the combination of the faster CPUs, faster and more RAM, and a new generation of professional graphics cards from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices' ATI.
Performance relates to productivity, in terms of how much time the user spends waiting for the computer, so that's what to look for. Assuming that the software is working as well as it can, and the user's work habits are reasonable, processing delays for engineering visualizations, animation previews, circuit simulations, and similar tasks can really add up.
So it's no surprise to me that there's still a market for pricey dual-processor workstations.
What does surprise me is that there aren't more companies trying to rebuild the market for super high-end workstations.
SGI, in its glory days, used to be able to sell some pretty amazing machines for professional users. I have an SGI Octane workstation that originally sold for over $50,000. That seems like crazy money, but even a $50,000 workstation in the right hands could still pay for itself in less than a year, a reasonable return on investment.
Alas, SGI went bankrupt again this week and then promptly sold itself to Rackable Systems for $25 million plus the assumption of SGI's debts.
I'm sad that SGI is gone, but it wasn't the workstation business that killed the company, and the numbers show that market niche still exists. HP could occupy that niche, if it chose, as could any company that makes four- and eight-processor servers, which share most of the same engineering issues.
Some small companies, such as Boxx Technologies (which I wrote about last summer in "Boxx fills in for a failing SGI") and HPC Systems, make bigger workstations, but both of these vendors' product lines are stuck with AMD Opteron processors at the moment, which are no longer performance-competitive with the new Xeons.
Later this year, new multiprocessor-capable Xeon processors will arrive that could reinvigorate the super-workstation market, and I hope that some of these companies step up to the challenge. I believe that there's some good money to be made there, and the rest of the world economy will benefit at the same time.
Peter N. Glaskowsky is a computer architect in Silicon Valley and a technology analyst for the Envisioneering Group. He has designed chip- and board-level products in the defense and computer industries, managed design teams, and served as editor in chief of the industry newsletter "Microprocessor Report." He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
You might be able to save a little money, but you'd end up with a system that lacks third-party software certification and will likely require a lot more attention and maintenance over the years. When the user can generate $250/hour of revenue, even a little downtime will quickly wipe out any cost savings you might achieve with whitebox components.
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Did HP pay you to write this advertisement?
It's a clearly biased article, so I will add my 2¢ of bias - I have never used an HP computer system that was close to good, or even one that I would consider a decent computer. I don't care how "functionally superior" you think these HP garbage cans are, because I would totally love to have a new Mac Pro. I know for a fact the Mac Pro is awesome, and the case isn't just pretty - it's solid aluminum and fully perforated for airflow like a wind tunnel. Trying to argue a case that HP designs better than Apple's engineering is like saying a suped-up race Mustang is cooler than a Ferarri Enzo.
There's no bias in this article except my usual bias in favor of good engineering.
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2x4 core 2.26 ghz (8 core total)
6 GB RAM
640 GB SATA
nVidia GeForce GT 120, 512 MB RAM
DVD recorder
Apple = $3300
I cannot even figure out how to BTO the new offerings from HP...
Dell Prices out about the same for a T7500 workstation, but WITHOUT dual Quad Core processors...
--Boxx supports Intel Xeon 5500, the newest Quad Core processor! Please see http://www.boxxtech.com/products/3DBOXX/8500_Overview.asp for a look at the new system!!
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and I don't what what type of girlie standards are used, but for a lot of us mac don't look good at all.
Apple's low end comes with a single quad core, but the $3300 Mac Pro comes standard with 2 quad cores....
I'd like for there to be more competition in this segment b/c it would force Apple to get off their duffs and refresh their high-end hardware more quickly. That said, I am skeptical that the HP box would result in higher revenue-per-employee than the Mac Pro, even with superior specs.
I'm also quite skeptical that anybody who's skills require such power will run into problems with the OS. When it comes to extremely skilled power users controlling their own workstation, there's very little performance difference between Apple & Windows & Linux. For the average consumer, its a much different story thats also much more controversial. But at this point, trying to make any revenue-per-employee based solely on the OS is ridiculous to an extreme. I'd have to call "fanboy" on that one. After a certain point, the OS is just the tool and offers little to no advantage over any other when the user knows exactly what they're doing.
http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/z-workstations/pdfs/hp_z400_datasheet.pdf
Apple Mac Pro:
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB871LL/A?mco=NDE4NDIwNA
Processor
HP 2.40 GHz dual
MAC 2.66GHz Quad
Quad is faster and has 4 cores or twice the processing ability of the dual
Memory
HP 4 DIMM slots DDR3 1333 MHz
MAC 3GB 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM
1333 faster then 1066
Hard drives
HP Up to (4) 3.5-inch 7200 rpm
Mac 640GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
Drive bays
HP 2 internal 3.5-inch HDD bays (3 external 5.25-inch bays,)
Mac 4 internal (size not specified)
Twice the bays with the Mac
PCIe Slots
HP 2 PCI Express Gen2 x16, 1 PCI Express Gen2 x8 mechanical/x4 electrical, 1 PCI Express Gen1 x8 (5 total)
Mac The Mac Pro has four PCI Express expansion slots.
A closer look would need to made of this area for the HP machine
Graphics
HP 2D NVIDIA Quadro NVS 295 (256 MB)
Mac NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB
Mac graphics processor has twice the graphics memory
Monitor
HP HP LP1965 19-inch LCD Monitor
Mac Mac Pro to a 24-inch Apple LED Cinema Display
Mac monitor is larger
Price
HP no price specified from web site
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/12454-12454-296719-307907-296721-3718668.html
Mac $2,499.00
This is a general over view of each machine from its specification only. A hands on test of each machine would be necessary. A closer look at benchmark performance would also needed in particular in the areas of processor, RAM, and graphics performance. Though GHZ is a strong indication of performance it is not all inclusive.
This analysis was done very quickly using the specifications only. Thou the HP machine appears to be the lest performing of the two.The HP has a much greater up grade path then the Mac especially in it's ability to retain more information and provide very fast hard drive performance. This would be especially useful in companies with large data pools. It's inherent flaw is having only two internal drive bays. In my opinion, if this analysis had been made on similar performance factors/equipment (apples to apples) rather then base entry level units (apples to oranges) the HP would be cheaper once the price were known with a much greater up grade path.
Final word, buy the HP then up grade it. Never buy a PC or Mac because it's pretty (dah).
I sense that Apple has lost a lot of this market for its own unique reasons.
The architectural, scientific and design houses buying $10 to $30K stations generally know a heck of a lot more about hardware and software than civilian users. I sense they require a lot more flexibility in hardware choices than HP or Dell is willing to offer - and even if HP or Dell did, in case a glitch or query arises on your $30K station, who can you get an answer from promptly - the big OEM's or the top custom shops like Boxx? Customer service and flexibility in hardware choices win this competition hands-down.
- by Mac OS XP April 5, 2009 4:04 PM PDT
- Who could possibly need a $10k machine? Unless you need it for all kinds of 3D renderings and weather forecast models or to control all of a company's systems or whatever. $1k will be more than enough to do basic business stuff like worksheets and presentations and internet and stuff like that.
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- by monkeyfun14 April 6, 2009 8:27 AM PDT
- What do you think a workstation is designed for?
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- by pjhenry1216 April 21, 2009 7:26 AM PDT
- You should have stopped after "or to control all of a company's systems." Because then your post would have both your question and your answer and you only would have looked like you were stating the obvious instead of not understanding what you're talking about. If the employee is bringing in $250 in revenue per hour, what kind of work do you think they're doing? Making a spreadsheet? At no point in this article were you ever supposed to believe this is for an average computer user.
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(29 Comments)Its not made to browse the web and play games.