Dell Precision T1600: Workstation Class
by Dustin Sklavos on May 2, 2011 4:55 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- IT Computing
- Dell
- Intel
- Xeon
- Precision
- Workstation
- Enterprise
- NVIDIA
Conclusion: A Reliable Workhorse
First, let's dispense with the elephant in the room: yes, it's much cheaper to build your own workstation. If you were using consumer grade parts off the shelf, you could easily chop half the price tag off of our review system. Most of the enthusiasts here could build a substantially faster machine for less money, and the components in that machine would be warrantied for at least as long as the Dell Precision T1600.
Unfortunately, that's a problematic perspective. Even taking consumer/business product segmentation out of the equation, most businesses big or small don't have the benefit of someone like me or someone like you. I'm essentially in business for myself as a filmmaker and videographer, but I know how to tune an overclock and maintain my tower. If a part fails, I know how to replace it. I can build, tweak, and tune until the cows come home. Businesses typically don't have that luxury--or a desire to get into that sort of technical support.
In those instances, they're going to want a machine that's ISV certified for the applications they need to run; they may very well even need to create a small farm of machines like this. When I was in school we had a lab full of enterprise-class machines just like this T1600 designed for compositing/video editing and Adobe After Effects work. (And just to ruffle a few feathers, it's mostly independent houses that standardize on Macs and Final Cut Pro; smaller users like me are agile enough to use whatever's available and major production companies have been using Avid on PCs since time immemorial.) A business is going to need a machine they can rely on and service to back it up, and Dell is willing to provide both of these.
That being said, it's hard not to feel at least a little fleeced by Dell's upgrade pricing. The T1600 starts at 2GB of non-ECC DDR3, and the upgrade to 4GB is a ridiculous $135, nearly three times what that memory sells for at retail. Go up to ECC memory and suddenly the price explodes, with 8GB costing a downright obscene $780. This tower supports up to 16GB of non-ECC or 32GB of ECC DDR3. Crucial will sell you the same 8GB of ECC DDR3 at a lower price than Dell wants for 4GB of non-ECC kit. That's ignoring the $100 markup on the NVIDIA Quadro 2000 graphics card or the $200 markup on the processor. Workstations don't come cheap, but some of this is downright Apple pricing.
What you're really paying for are the certifications and the support. The T1600 is an entirely serviceable piece of hardware, comes with Office 2010 Starter standard, runs quietly and mostly efficiently (though 65% efficiency on the default power supply certainly isn't a selling point), and it will do the jobs it was intended for. Until HP refreshes their workstations with Sandy Bridge based Xeons, the Precision T1600 stands to be the only game in town and it's a fine one. Just be ready to pay for it.
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Michael REMY - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
good test but why use old cinebench 10 instead the lastest 11.5 release ?mastard - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
Why were there no test of workstation type applications? Quadro cards are not optimized or intended for games.JarredWalton - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
Dustin ran SPECviewperf11; if you have any other specific requests for tests, let him/us know.RandomUsername3245 - Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - link
I'd be interested in seeing tests of pro level graphics cards (Quadro & FireGL) in Solidworks and Autocad.**I'd also be very interested in home-grown benchmarks for these programs (perhaps based on CAD models provided from academia or industry) since we've seen both Nvidia and ATI cheat in past benchmarks for gaming cards.**
Stuka87 - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
Am I the only one that has never heard of the E3 series Xeon chips? Are they a replacement for the 5600 series, or where do they slot in compared to previous gen Xeons?And yes, Dell RAm is laughably expensive. They wanted $430 to go from 4GB to 8GB in my M4500. I bought 8GB from Crucial instead for $97. They also have crazy prices for SSD's.
It would been nice to see some benchmarks from workstation class applications that make better use of the Quadro.
DigitalFreak - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
No, they're the replacement for the Xeon 3000 series single socket processors. The 5600 series will be replaced by the E5, but not until Q4 this year.Stuka87 - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
Oh, and a small typo I believe on page 2 after the specview scores:"Quadro 2000 produces scores at least to three times higher than a GeForce GTX 480 would under this test."
Twirrim - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
Don't know if it counts for this model range but the 3400 series of workstations are pretty hefty, the heaviest workstations I've ever had the 'pleasure' of lugging around anywhere. They put me in mind of the weight of a decent sized CRT monitor rather than a workstation. That said the build quality is very high on them and the devices do look like they can take a serious beating.smilingcrow - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
I was surprised how basic the heatsink is on this compared to an Optiplex 980 which is a mere business class desktop and not a workstation. That Optiplex has a much larger heatsink and uses a larger fan so potentially could run even quieter.You didn’t seem to give any actual power consumption figures which would be useful especially at idle. I did read that the P/S efficiency is poor but actual measurements are more useful than just quoting the minimum rated efficiency.
dragonsqrrl - Monday, May 2, 2011 - link
4GB of RAM is a bit low for a system running 64-bit Windows 7, especially considering its intended to run memory hungry workstation applications. Running Maya, Houdini, After Effects, Premier, or even Photoshop, I personally wouldn't go with less then 8GB of memory in a new system. Most of these applications could easily eat up ~3GB of RAM running a single instance with a moderate workload. Hope it's not ridiculously expensive for the 8GB upgrade, it's hit or miss with Dell sometimes.