Xeon Workstation PC

eeyore

eeyore

Suspended / Banned
Messages
1,068
Name
eeyore
Edit My Images
Yes
I've looking at getting a desk top pc and have found a few places that are selling xeon workstation PCs, mostly reconditioned HP "Z" series for a decent price.
Does any one use a similar PC for photo editing with PS and could pass on any experiences or pit falls?

Some of the units I've looked at vary from single processor quad core, to duel processor hex cores with few also having Nvidia graphics cards in too. Generally 16 or 32 gb of ram in the PC.

I manly use PS CC, and Topaz labs plugins (Occasionally use there stand alone editor too) but am looking to use PTgui for doing gigapixel pictures.

Cheers :)
 
eeyore said:
I have found a few places that are selling xeon workstation PCs, mostly reconditioned HP "Z" series for a decent price.
Click to expand...
Places such as?

I was using a Dell T5400 workstation and it ran nicely with Lightroom. That would be quite an old Xeon (E5420) nowadays, and the machine has since been given a second processor and been repurposed as an ESXi server.
 
Like Neil said, the newer Xeon's are great - a lot are almost the same chip as some of the i7's.

Upgrading a Xeon system isn't always as simple as upgrading a standard i5/i7 set up. For instance the boards are very different (usually). It will probably have less PCi sockets, even the holes to attach it to a case. Also the ram will usually be ECC and not everything that works with an i7 will work with a Xeon. The big advantage of using a Xeon server as an editing rig is the second hand cost as Xeon chips don't hold as much value as say a good i7.
 
onomatopoeia said:
Places such as?

I was using a Dell T5400 workstation and it ran nicely with Lightroom. That would be quite an old Xeon (E5420) nowadays, and the machine has since been given a second processor and been repurposed as an ESXi server.
Click to expand...

One if the places was: www.bargainhardware.co.uk I found them on eBay and then went to there site. Another similar company on Amazon too.
 
Last edited:
neil_g said:
Even the dual X5650 in the Z800 gets outperformed by a single 3rd gen i7-3930.
Click to expand...
Since I don't follow CPU benchmarking much, do you know if that they take account of the potential of a dual Xeon setup to support 24 threads rather than the 12 of the i7 in situations where this would be helpful (e.g. type 1 hypervisors)?
 
Their's really not a lot of point in a Xeon Workstation unless you are doing mission critical tasks which are sensitive to memory bit flips, or you need lots of memory and/or multiple CPUs (as supported by the E5 series). For instance, we've just provisioned a 12 core (24 hyperthreaded) machine for running our continuous build and deployment service - lots of parallelisation there.

That said, you can get some fairly niche CPUs that offer relatively decent amounts of compute power with minimal idle power consumption. For instance the E3-1220L/1260L They're not that common secondhand though.
 
I haven't measured it in a while but my i7-2600K I got easily up to 16000+ on the benchmarks....But I agree with afasoas on the benefits of the xeon machines...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top