Your Computer Hardware Matters

The Workstations in Your Studio

There are three aspects of workstations that are important to the performance of the system. If you are using multiple workstations and/or network storage, there is a fourth.

1:   The processor or CPU

Think of the CPU as a person working at a desk doing work. The faster the person can work, the more they can get done in a given time period. The speed of the processors today are measured in Giga-hertz (aka Ghz). This speed is typically in the 2 to 3 range (like 2.2Ghz or 3.1Ghz). Another more important aspect of your CPU is the ‘number of cores’. Now let’s adjust the analogy a little; think of the cores as clones of the person. So, if you have a 2.5Ghz CPU with dual (2) cores, you now have 2 people at the desk each working at the 2.5Ghz speed. If you have a quad (4) core CPU, then you have 4 people at the desk each working on 2.5Ghz. If you have a single (1) core CPU, then there is just the one person. With this understanding, you can compare a dual-core CPU at 1.8Ghz to a single-core CPU at 2.8Ghz, and which is faster? The dual-core is like 2 people each working at 1.8Ghz, so let’s call that 3.6 total Ghz (2 times 1.8) vs one person working at 2.8Ghz. So the slower speed, but with more cores is actually more performant.

General recommendation: 6 or more core processor
Minimum recommended: quad-core processor

2:   The amount or memory or RAM

Think of the RAM in the computer as representing the top of the desk that is being worked at. The more RAM, the larger the amount of room on the desk top. So, when you have more room to spread out your work in front of you, it is easier (aka faster) to find a particular page of notes or information. You can generally work faster when you don’t have to rummage through some piles of paperwork to keep finding what you are looking for. Your workstation should have at least 8GB of RAM in order to have sufficient room for your computer to organize its work. Generally, the more RAM the better your workstation will perform.

General recommendation: 16GB or more
Minimum recommended: 8 GB

3:   The performance of its storage device or Hard Drive

Think of the Hard Drive as filing drawers in the desk being worked at. You have lots of files and documents on the top of the desk that you are working on, but there is a very limited amount of space there compared to what you can fit in the drawers. How fast you can get files out of the drawers and how fast you can put them back into the drawers will have a big impact on how fast you can get your work done. The size of the drawers is important so that you have enough room for all the files you have, but much more importantly is how fast you can actually get files in and out of the drawers. The speed of your hard drive is much more important versus the capacity. It is possible for larger capacity drives to perform slower than smaller capacity drives based upon their transfer rates, usually specified in units of MB/s (Megabytes per second). These transfer rates are also known as the read and write speed of the drive. These are the two most important speeds to look at when comparing hard drives for performance. You can compare any two drives of any kind (SATA, SAS, SSD, SSHD, etc.) in an apples-to-apples way by looking at just the read and write speed specifications. From a general standpoint, in lack of read and write specifications, the kinds of drives from slowest to fastest are SATA, SSHD, SAS, and then SSD. It is important that you do not get the interface speed confused with the read and write speed of the hard drive when performing these comparisons.

General recommendation: SAS drives
Minimum recommended: 7200 RPM SATA
Best: SSD

Here are some more details about different kinds of Hard Drives for the not-so-faint-at-tech… There are two kinds of hard drives that you would typically find in workstations you buy at retail outlets. They are called SATA and SSD drives. SATA stands for Serial AT Attachment, and drives of this type are usually only referred to by the acronym. SSD stands for Solid State Drive, and drives of this type will be listed as either SSD or Solid State. In higher-end small business class and enterprise class servers and networked storage devices, another type of drive, SAS, is common. SAS stands for Serial Attached SCSI, and they are typically only referred to by the SAS acronym. There is a newer 4th kind of drive starting to show up in workstations that is called SSHD, which stands for Solid State Hybrid Drive. A SSHD is a hybrid between SATA and SSD. SSD has typically faster transfer rates than SATA, so these SSHD drives use a combination of a mini Solid State drive and a SATA drive inside one drive. The SSD portion acts as a buffer that caches data as it comes in and out of the drive before it reads/writes to the SATA portion. These drives will give SSD-like small bursts of performance over the SATA performance.

If you have multiple workstations that need to copy files between them and/or you are using a network storage device, then this fourth aspect is very important.

4:   The network interface (NIC = Network Interface Card)

This one is a little more difficult to explain with the office analogy. Maybe think of it as the phone in your office. When you need to get information that is not in your office, you need to call somewhere to get it. If you phone is a cell-phone (i.e. a wireless network card), then you may have some call quality issues (dropped calls, interference and such) compared to a land-line phone (i.e. a wired network card). There is also the aspect of speed/capacity of your network. This is kind of like having more than one phone, so the more phones, the more simultaneous calls you can make so you can get or send more information faster. For wired interface cards, typical speeds are 100 and 1000 megabits per second. These are sometimes referred to as 100 megabit and 1 gigabit (aka 1 gig) respectively. With wireless, there are lots of different speeds and technologies. Generally a 1 gig wired connection will always beat any kind of wireless speed or technology by a long way. There are some recent bleeding-edge wireless speeds starting to hit the market that can compete with 1 gig wired, but they are not typically mature enough to beat 1 gig wired yet. Additionally, there is a 10 gig wired option available, but is very expensive and more typically used in large enterprise environments.

So, a 1 gig wired connection is what we suggest you look for. If you have a computer that does not have a built-in wired Ethernet connector, then we recommend you get a USB 3.0 or for Mac’s a Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter. If you only have wireless and USB 2.0 in your computer, then a USB 2.0 to Ethernet adapter is still probably better than using the wireless. USB 2.0 maxes out at 480 megabits (aka one-half of 1 gig).

General recommendation: 1 gig, wired
Minimum recommended: 1 gig, wired
Recommended against: wireless