Post by Anthony on May 3, 2015 11:45:49 GMT
HP’s latest addition to its mid-range workstation collection has the potential to expand to great lengths
HP never fails to update its workstation line-up as soon as new technology becomes available, and the Z440 is a new mid-range desktop that puts Nvidia and Intel’s latest components to work.
It comes with the quad-core Intel Xeon E5-1630 v3 processor that was released during the latter half of 2014, as part of the Haswell-E line-up, which also saw the release of the X99 chipset. The Z440 uses its server variant, Intel’s C612.
DDR4 memory is one of the key new features of X99, with HP using 16GB in the configuration sent to us. Although DDR4 slightly raises latencies and the overall price of a workstation, it still leads to better overall performance due to running at faster clock speeds. HP has opted for the lower end of DDR4 speed grading, with 2133MHz modules, but even that should mean improved performance over DDR3. Other X99 features include additional PCI Express lanes, greater overall memory bandwidth and more USB 3.0 ports.
The Xeon E5-1630 runs at 3.7GHz, and being a quad-core, eight-thread Haswell processor, offers roughly similar rendering performance to a Core i7. But Xeon provide a few extras, such as support for error-correcting ECC registered memory, which is an upgrade option
The final component to complete the Z440’s specification is an Nvidia Quadro K2200, one of the firm’s mid-range cards, refreshed as of last year. It packs 640 CUDA cores, 4GB of GDDR5 memory and 1.3TFLOPS of performance.
We always look at upgrade options, and if you’re willing to pay for even better rendering performance, there’s plenty available for the Z440. The CPU can be swapped for an eight-core Xeon (the 3.2GHz E5-1680 option looks particularly lovely) and there are graphics cards aplenty from the likes of both AMD and Nvidia, including some top-of-the-range models.
The maximum memory you can order is 128GB, thanks to the eight DIMM slots on the motherboard. And while HP sent us a Z440 with a reasonable storage configuration of a 256GB SSD and 1TB hard disk, you can opt for more disk storage or an HP Z Drive – a fast, PCI Express SSD.
All these upgrades could cause the Z440’s cost to balloon, of course, which almost defeats the point.
With faster memory, a solid processor and an upgraded GPU, you’re getting better performance across the board for roughly the same cash as last year’s mid-range workstations. But how much better is the performance? That’s where our testing comes in.
The Z440 is roughly comparable with other mid-range systems we’ve reviewed over the last year. Dell’s Precision T5810 uses DDR4 memory and a very similar Xeon CPU, so it should offer a similar level of performance in CPU-based tasks to the Z440, while the older T5610 used the earlier Quadro K2000
From SPECviewperf, it’s clear the K2200’s extra memory and shader hardware are great benefits. Scores doubled across the board in comparison to the K2000, helped by the 3.7GHz chip’s additional CPU power over the 2.5GHz T5610.
With 3ds Max, performance is only slightly better than Dell’s T5180, which is to be expected given the Xeon E5 processors are both part of the same family.
The Z440 certainly ploughed through the standard Underwater render in 4 minutes 8 seconds, and the HDTV render in 15 minutes, 44 seconds, which was about 15 per cent faster. These render times are both very much in line with the Z440’s higher clock speed.
It’s clear the Z440 offers a good performance improvement over last year’s mid-range systems, but a carefully chosen upgrade, perhaps adding a new graphics card or upgrading to an eight-core CPU, could turn it into a system to really compete with the more high-end machines.
Verdict
The Z440 raises the bar for mid-range performance and provides a good upgrade path if you need even more power in your machine.
Features – 4/5
Performance – 4/5
Design – 3/5
Value for money – 5/5
HP never fails to update its workstation line-up as soon as new technology becomes available, and the Z440 is a new mid-range desktop that puts Nvidia and Intel’s latest components to work.
It comes with the quad-core Intel Xeon E5-1630 v3 processor that was released during the latter half of 2014, as part of the Haswell-E line-up, which also saw the release of the X99 chipset. The Z440 uses its server variant, Intel’s C612.
DDR4 memory is one of the key new features of X99, with HP using 16GB in the configuration sent to us. Although DDR4 slightly raises latencies and the overall price of a workstation, it still leads to better overall performance due to running at faster clock speeds. HP has opted for the lower end of DDR4 speed grading, with 2133MHz modules, but even that should mean improved performance over DDR3. Other X99 features include additional PCI Express lanes, greater overall memory bandwidth and more USB 3.0 ports.
The Xeon E5-1630 runs at 3.7GHz, and being a quad-core, eight-thread Haswell processor, offers roughly similar rendering performance to a Core i7. But Xeon provide a few extras, such as support for error-correcting ECC registered memory, which is an upgrade option
The final component to complete the Z440’s specification is an Nvidia Quadro K2200, one of the firm’s mid-range cards, refreshed as of last year. It packs 640 CUDA cores, 4GB of GDDR5 memory and 1.3TFLOPS of performance.
We always look at upgrade options, and if you’re willing to pay for even better rendering performance, there’s plenty available for the Z440. The CPU can be swapped for an eight-core Xeon (the 3.2GHz E5-1680 option looks particularly lovely) and there are graphics cards aplenty from the likes of both AMD and Nvidia, including some top-of-the-range models.
The maximum memory you can order is 128GB, thanks to the eight DIMM slots on the motherboard. And while HP sent us a Z440 with a reasonable storage configuration of a 256GB SSD and 1TB hard disk, you can opt for more disk storage or an HP Z Drive – a fast, PCI Express SSD.
All these upgrades could cause the Z440’s cost to balloon, of course, which almost defeats the point.
With faster memory, a solid processor and an upgraded GPU, you’re getting better performance across the board for roughly the same cash as last year’s mid-range workstations. But how much better is the performance? That’s where our testing comes in.
The Z440 is roughly comparable with other mid-range systems we’ve reviewed over the last year. Dell’s Precision T5810 uses DDR4 memory and a very similar Xeon CPU, so it should offer a similar level of performance in CPU-based tasks to the Z440, while the older T5610 used the earlier Quadro K2000
From SPECviewperf, it’s clear the K2200’s extra memory and shader hardware are great benefits. Scores doubled across the board in comparison to the K2000, helped by the 3.7GHz chip’s additional CPU power over the 2.5GHz T5610.
With 3ds Max, performance is only slightly better than Dell’s T5180, which is to be expected given the Xeon E5 processors are both part of the same family.
The Z440 certainly ploughed through the standard Underwater render in 4 minutes 8 seconds, and the HDTV render in 15 minutes, 44 seconds, which was about 15 per cent faster. These render times are both very much in line with the Z440’s higher clock speed.
It’s clear the Z440 offers a good performance improvement over last year’s mid-range systems, but a carefully chosen upgrade, perhaps adding a new graphics card or upgrading to an eight-core CPU, could turn it into a system to really compete with the more high-end machines.
Verdict
The Z440 raises the bar for mid-range performance and provides a good upgrade path if you need even more power in your machine.
Features – 4/5
Performance – 4/5
Design – 3/5
Value for money – 5/5