Dell SA explores real differences between workstation-, desktop-class PC

So, you've just opened up a new branch office, and you need 20 workstations for the staff of your new satellite location to work on. Do you need workstations, or are you looking for desktops in this case?

The answer to this question is currently somewhat unclear in the end-user market, but Dell SA has the answer in all of its glorious detail.

The differences between a workstation and desktop system are actually much clearer than what their names would suggest, which is why so much confusion exists in the marketplace about the correct uses for each of these types of computer systems.

At Dell SA, we strive to ensure that each of our customers acquires the right tool for the job at hand, hence the focus of this article will be to clearly differentiate the workstation and desktop products we offer based on their capabilities and applications.

Opens Ben McDonald, Brand Manager of Client Products at Dell SA: "At Dell, we like to make use of a clear-cut (if you'll excuse the pun) analogy to explain the key differences between workstations and desktops as a cohesive thought. The common desktop PC, to our eyes, can be likened to a Swiss Army Knife. This device is useful in almost any situation, famed for its versatility and do-it-all abilities. The workstation, on the other hand, is more akin to a surgeon's scalpel. Pure precision, employed for the meticulous and exact purpose of surgery, but not ideal for anything beyond this specific job."

In the end, the choice between a workstation and desktop machine comes down to the users who will be working on the system each day. A workstation user is an entirely different animal to the average office desktop user - the tasks that they perform and the applications they use on a day-to-day basis are in a totally different league.

Workstation users are highly-skilled professionals tasked with the tough job of designing and engineering everything from Boeings to brake calipers - in short everything we use on a daily basis has been designed at some point to performs its duty on a highly specialised computer-aided design (CAD) software platform.

But these are not the only people who need a workstation over a desktop PC. The technology is also used in a variety of other specialised industry verticals. Financial gurus may need machines with the largest number-crunching capabilities possible, while the medical field requires systems with highly detailed and precise imaging capabilities to perform its job of saving human lives. Workstation systems are also used extensively for geographical and geological exploration and imaging, and the digital content creation (DCC) sector uses these high-end systems for delivering the killer special effects and video animation that we crave in modern entertainment.

Trek to the summit

00Days

:

00Hrs

:

00Min

:

00Sec

"Each of these users employs highly specialised applications for these tasks, but each requires the specific strengths of a workstation over a desktop PC," comments McDonald.

So all of the hardware in a Dell Precision workstation is tailored towards the demanding nature of these applications and the professionals using them. Even a high-end gaming GPU will not be able to deliver the rendering speed and clarity which a complex CAD project relies on, so Precision workstations are fitted with the technology which has been designed specifically for this duty - namely the NVidia Quadro range and ATI FireGL workstation solutions.

While gamers today depend on killer Direct3D performance, rendering and CAD applications are entirely focused in the OpenGL environments, so these workstation offerings are built specifically with the most extreme OpenGL capabilities incorporated.

This need for specific, specialised raw horsepower covers all aspects of a PC's performance envelope, however, not merely the display hardware. Financial workstation users want a system that is capable of crunching huge numbers, so the Dell Precision workstation range offers Xeon processors as an option over the desktop-oriented Core 2 Duo range. High-speed storage is delivered via the incorporation of Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) devices rather than the far more cost-effective but slower SATA standard. And the ultimate RAM performance and reliability is delivered via the latest DDR2 FB-DIMM (Fully-Buffered DIMM) memory modules.

"But beyond simply incorporating all of the highest-performing technology components into the machine, a Dell workstation is also a guarantee of compatibility with the specialist software the workstation user is working in. We have close relationships with all the major software vendors delivering solutions into these industry verticals, and where they have their own certification processes we comply fully with these efforts, and should they not have processes in place, Dell has a very strong technical working relationship with the vendors to ensure that the workstation and software work optimally together. What this means is that the organisation who has already spent a lot of cash resources on such a high-end and specialised package can be guaranteed of extracting the maximum value of this investment when they run it on Dell Precision workstations - whereas 'ordinary' desktop PCs could easily have problems with the package," explains McDonald.

The Dell workstation range, the Precision series, is made up of five "base" systems around which the customer can build his own custom machine. Dell has recently added two mobile workstation platforms to its product lineup in response to customer demand for this level of professional performance in a mobile package. Each Precision workstation is tailored to the needs of the customer in order to maximise the productivity of these highly-skilled and well-paid professionals, while ensuring compatibility with leading software packages sold into this wide range of industry verticals.

"Workstation machines are highly specialised products designed for the particular needs of power-hungry applications such as CAD and DCC, among others. Choosing a workstation ensures that the already heavy investment in an application to perform these duties will yield the results you expect, and not be hampered by problems due to hardware incompatibilities or slow the professionals using the systems down due to desktop levels of performance. In short, the workstation is an investment in hardware which will guarantee the delivery of the benefits you want from your high-end software," concludes McDonald.