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I like the idea of FSF-certified hardware, but aren't POWER9 machines ten times the price of the average desktop?
by MaxBarraclough 6y ago
I like the idea of FSF-certified hardware, but aren't POWER9 machines ten times the price of the average desktop?
- smcl 6y agoMaybe not 10x but they’re certainly more than a similarly spec’d dev workstation. I guess the idea is that developers are the target market and they have a bit more disposable income on average and are more likely to want to pay extra for something like this.
- grey4228 6y agoWhat 'smcl' commented, also all prices are in this link, scroll down: https://www.raptorcs.com/ https://www.raptorcs.com/
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoThanks. Looks like their cheapest system goes for $3,404.59. It has VGA output, but no DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort.
- dragontamer 6y agoStrange: the price on their systems seems to have gone up since the last time I saw them. I wonder if shipping issues have caused their prices to skyrocket recently?
- greggyb 6y agoDoing a quick spec out of a Talos II that is similar[0] to my Threadripper 3970x workstation puts the price at ~2x.
- aidenn0 6y agoAnd a typical TR workstation is 2x the price of an "average desktop" so maybe a 4x multiplier?
- greggyb 6y agoYou could price out a desktop for your own comparison. I don't think it's fair to compare something explicitly designed to be a workstation to a desktop-class machine.
- aidenn0 6y agoIt's both fair and not; if you want a desktop, the cheapest POWER desktop is 3k, and at 4 cores it's arguably not competing against TR. Yes it's IO throughput will put a desktop class part to shame, but you can't go any cheaper.
- greggyb 6y agoAgreed. There isn't really a viable desktop-class offering from Raptor. This is a shame. For those who have need for the workstation-ish features Raptor offers in its Talos line, the premium isn't too great over a roughly equivalent x86 workstation-class machine.