Lenovo ThinkStation D30 Workstation Review: 16 Cores and 32 Threads Under Your Desk
by Dustin Sklavos on November 15, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Lenovo
- Quadro
- Workstation
- Sandy Bridge E
- Enterprise
- Octalcore
Application and Futuremark Performance
On paper, the Lenovo ThinkStation D30 I have in for review is the fastest desktop I've ever tested and should easily best the other workstations I'll be comparing it to. The Quadro 5000 is the most powerful workstation GPU (up to this point I've only tested the 4000) on the charts, and dual Intel octalcore Xeons should give any system a run for their money. At the same time, keep in mind that the PCMarks are extremely dependent on storage subsystem performance, and I get the distinct impression that's going to be the achilles' heel of this review system due to the mechanical hard disk.
The 3DMarks defer to the Quadro 5000 as they should, but the two HP workstations both enjoyed SSDs as their system drives instead of the mechanical drive in the D30, and even eight more 3.1GHz cores can't really pick up the slack.
Pushing single-threaded applications is an absolute waste of the hardware in the D30, but the instant anything multi-threaded comes in the extra eight cores come on line and the system surges ahead. What I find most interesting, though, are the x264 results. Despite having half the CPU power, the HP Z420 is able to actually beat the D30 in the first pass by three frames. In the second pass, the extra eight cores in the D30 only offer a roughly 33% boost in performance.
Suspecting the storage subsystem was holding the D30 back, I grabbed a spare 60GB OCZ Vertex 3 I had laying around and plugged it in, then ran the x264 benchmark off of it. The results were actually very surprising, and in retrospect I may have been too hard on Lenovo for their decision, as the D30 crunched through the video in roughly the same amount of time.
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theduckofdeath - Friday, November 16, 2012 - link
*rack mountedafkrotch - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
It doesn't take a fanboy to see that Apple simply updates too slowly and that just isn't going to be an option where time is money.melgross - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
Very amusing. You must do standup.twtech - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
I would expect at least 32GB of RAM, preferably 64GB. There are other uses for a machine like that, but some compilers can use as much as 1.5GB per thread. With 16GB of RAM, you wouldn't even be able to use half the threads without hitting the swap file.Joschka77 - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
Thats exactly what i was thinking, too.Got an HP Z 820 with two E5 2680 and 128GB of RAM next to me...
This thing is a beast...
Rick83 - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
Got a z820 as well a few months ago, but IT's standard layout is 8x2 GB as well.ordererd 4x8GB to add - but the board doesn't support that as 48GB combination, so only running 32gigs.
Need moar memory.
Colleague is eyeing ordering another 32 to at least get the machine to be slightly more usable..
Joschka77 - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
As far as i know mixed RAM sizes should be possible; have you had a look at the Service manual for the Z820? There´s a hint in what order the Dimms should be placed. ->heres a link:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/C...
afkrotch - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
My last job I was running a Dell T7500. The more ram, the better. I didn't need as much processing power, but needed memory. Was using it for system integration work, so I was running multiple VMs. 16 gig of ram and I was running out all the time. Having to pause/shutdown a VM to fire up another one.duploxxx - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
If you want to really push the build quality and design, don't compare a 2 socket WS with 1 socket systems.You need to compare this system with a HP z620 and a Dell T5600.
If you really want to bring the added value over these way overprised CPU you need to find very specific applications to do so... for 99% they are never needed besides EGO. These days most will run just fine with a 1 socket WS with all the cpu power existing today.
extide - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
For the people who buy these systems, even dual E5-2687W's is still too slow.