Location: Home Page > Article Article

Roughly speaking, a workstation is also a type of desktop computer, and it also belongs to a computer, but is different from ordinary computers. In terms of appearance, normal people cannot distinguish workstations from ordinary computers in appearance, and appearance is basically same as that of ordinary desktop computers. So what is difference between a workstation and a desktop computer? Let's break down the difference between a workstation and a regular computer.

Targeting workstations and shared computer usage:

Regular desktop computers usually have a wide range of applications, such as gaming, office work, audiovisual entertainment, etc., and are suitable for desktop computers in most scenarios.

Typical desktop

Workstations are generally microcomputers specially designed for scientific research institutes, which can provide users with better performance, especially graphics processing and task parallelism capabilities, to effectively improve efficiency and stability of equipment. Requirements are usually used. more in enterprises.

High-end workstations will have one or two CPUs, while higher-end regular computers will only have one CPU. In terms of memory, it will also be equipped with stable ECC memory with validation, and graphics card is equipped with Quadro or FirePro graphics card as standard, which ensures stability of workstation in long-term heavy workload. And junior workstations are almost same as ordinary computers, there is no fundamental difference.

How is a workstation different from a regular computer?

Difference 1: CPU

For workstation CPUs, most of them choose Xeon processors with high performance multi-core processors to achieve more powerful computing capabilities, or support multiprocessing for high floating point and 3D rendering in graphics applications. , work, etc. For regular computers, we use home-class processors such as Intel Core, Pentium, Celeron, or AMD Ryzen processors.

Difference Two: Memory

For workstation memory, ECC error correction memory is usually selected, which provides a large amount of memory and greater scalability. For professional applications such as designing and video editing that require more memory, ECC memory can detect and automatically correct temporary device memory errors, improving data integrity and system reliability. ECC memory is not compatible with our regular computer memory.

Memory

Third difference: graphics card

For workstation graphics cards, professional graphics cards, professional Nvidia quadro or firepro cards are commonly used, while conventional graphics cards are usually Nvidia geforce graphics cards. In fact, these are different video card drivers. Conventional video cards are DirectX oriented and a small part of them. OpenGL games are optimized, while professional cards can display complex 3D models with high fidelity, fully support OpenGL standard, and provide hardware acceleration. And it supports more multi-head output and higher screen resolution, which is more suitable for large-screen design simulation, financial and other user needs.

Fourth difference: scalability

In addition to being more stable, workstation's hardware scalability is very high: more memory slots, multiple processors, PCIe slots, hard drive slots, USB ports, and more.

Fifth difference: stability

Compared to conventional desktop computers, workstations have stability of continuous operation under high load, which is also an obvious advantage of workstations. Workstations need to run for a long time and place higher demands on system stability, so equipment with higher reliability is often chosen. In particular, in terms of computer power supply, a high-quality power supply will be used to ensure greater stability in long-term operation. In addition, no expense is spared in heat dissipation and quietness, and some workstations also use mature liquid cooling technology to solve contradiction between "heat dissipation" and "noise".

Difference 6: Enhanced ISV Certification Provides Better Interoperability

The workstation has industry's most extensive ISV certification. Through joint certification testing with independent software vendors such as Adobe, Autodesk, Ansys, and Avid, performance of professional software on workstation platform has become more stable. Even for an animation production giant such as DreamWorks, in face of a huge amount of 3D rendering and computational work, workstation can still run smoothly for long periods of time under high load, effectively avoiding delays caused by downtime.

The aforementioned difference between a shared workstation and a desktop computer. Generally speaking, performance, scalability and stability of workstation is better than conventional computers. The hardware only uses standard server hardware, such as Zhiqiang CPU, Nvidiao professional card, ECC error correction memory, etc., naturally more expensive than ordinary computers.