What Are Workstations?

Reldar · 23 May 2010 at 00:35

Ok so I'm fairly new to building/learning about computers and I'm still confused to what all these Workstation Motherboards and Xeon/Opteron CPU's are. I mean they are loaded with like 6-24 cores.

What possible use could anyone have for that much power? What kind of Operating System do they use?
Are they available to the consumer market or intended for business's only?

I don't understand what they are or what they are for?

Cheers

PermaBanned · 23 May 2010 at 00:42

They're really dedicated server tech. You could run a normal desktop OS on it but it's not what it was designed for, and probably wouldn't give you any more (maybe even worse) performance than desktop components for the same price.

Judgeneo · 23 May 2010 at 00:43

Generally the consumer market has no use for such power, but when say, rendering the latest films, or doing CAD models/ aerodynamics for BMW they come in usefull.

I guess you could use them in servers aswell.

As for operating systems, your guess is as good as mine, though Linux based seems likely

d_brennen · 23 May 2010 at 00:47

The name is self explanatory. If you need that many cores for your livelihood you'll know. For the mainstream (read 99.9% of us) a single socket motherboard will suffice

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workstation

Reldar · 23 May 2010 at 00:52

d_brennen said:
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workstation

I can't believe I didn't think of that first! Thanks