Difference between a desktop and a workstation

One of things that confused me in my early days as a designer was the difference between a workstation and a desktop. The only fact that was clear to me was that workstation is a more powerful desktop. But why call a powerful desktop a workstation when we don’t call powerful cars a different name. I was very curious about this. So I set out to google to find out the difference. So one of my motivations to write down the article is help out those who are in the same state of confusion as I was. I am a believer that if are able to share whatever we learn we will be helping out save the time of many others.

 So first let me address the first concern why a high performance desktop is called a workstation. Digging a little deeper into the matter I found that the confusion arises only when we use the term in at present. During the early years of personnel computer history there were very vast difference between a desktop and a workstation. In the old times the desktop was a low power computer and the workstation was a very powerful computer (but not as powerful as a mainframe or a super computer) used for special tasks such as engineering, CAD, etc, for which the PC didn’t have enough horsepower. Now the PC CPUs evolved so much that there is little difference between a PC and a workstation. Nowadays a workstation means just a high powered PC.

Today, even budget, commodity desktop PCs bought at an office supply store or discount retailer can be very efficient and powerful business productivity tools. Some users, however, require more computing power than a standard desktop computer can provide. These users often pay premium prices for high-end, built to order machines called workstations. Although desktop PCs and workstations can look the same on the outside, they are engineered to meet different user demands and expectations on the inside. Below listed are some of the major differences listed.

1.Mainstream ISV certification

 ISV or Independent Software Vendors are companies like Dassault, Ansys etc that produce high end softwares. Workstations are usually certified by ISV for compatibility, fine tuning for the software etc. But desktops do not have ISV certifications

2.Graphics card

 Workstations have OpenGL 3D graphic cards which are essential for most 3D professional creations. It provides hardware acceleration, and better performance. Desktops usually consumer graphic cards or no graphics card at all.

3.Memory

Workstations use ECC ( Error Correcting Code ) memory. These are a kind of memory that can detect and correct the most common kinds of internal data corruption. ECC memory is used in most computers where data corruption cannot be tolerated under any circumstances, such as for scientific or financial computing. But desktops only have less costly non ECC memory.

4.Users

Desktop PCs are well-suited for home or small business computer users. Desktop PC users can surf the Web, play media files, email, play games, chat and video conference. Desktop PCs can also run office productivity software like databases, spreadsheets, word processors and Web applications with ease. Workstation users on the other hand, are often scientists, engineers, architects and digital media content creators whose work requires much more computing power than the average small business computer user would ever need.

5.Performance

Entry-level desktop, notebook and netbook computers today have more raw processing and storage capacity than many high-end workstations had a decade ago. Nevertheless, today's workstations are engineered to outperform desktops in data analysis, image manipulation and data transfer. The speed difference between a workstation and a desktop may not be obvious, however, when running a word processor application or Web browser. A workstation's superior performance can best be seen when you need to encode and render images or video files, search through massive databases, recalculate large spreadsheets, manipulate computer-aided design drawings or run multiple large applications simultaneously

6.Computer Components

Each component in a workstation computer selected and optimized with the goal of increasing the movement of data into, within and out of the system. Workstations have more powerful graphics processing units for fast 2D or 3D graphic image creation and manipulation. While many new desktops have multi-core processors, workstations may come with more cores per CPU or support multiple, separate CPUs for even more parallel processing capability. In addition, workstations often come standard with more RAM and larger, faster hard drives than the typical desktop has.

7.Expandability

Many desktops today come with their GPU, hard drive controllers and network interfaces built into the motherboard. In addition, you may not have the room or the connections available to add an additional hard drive or a better graphics card. Workstations, on the other hand, are often designed from the ground up to make it easy to add or swap hard drives, increase RAM, replace a graphics card or add additional graphics cards support multiple displays.

8.Cost

Due to the use of technologically advanced components with higher more performance the cost of workstations are always more than that of desktops.