HP Z820 RED Edition: because HP is not stupid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RED has partnered with HP, NVIDIA and Adobe to bring out a new high-performance and customizable workstation called: HP Z820 RED Edition. It will go on sale next July, giving answer to everything we missed a little more than a week ago after the presentation of the “new” Mac Pro (you can read more in this article).

For those who are used to using PCs and want to renew hardware (at a high level), this little jewel will come in handy. The same is not true for those who use Macs, who if they want to enjoy all these advantages will have to change platform, with its consequences, or wait until 2013, when Apple has assured that it will renew its towers providing big changes (ahem…).

Two days ago Jarred Land posted on Reduser.net an entry announcing the collaboration of these companies. As expected, this fact created great controversies, provoking joy on one side, and not so satisfactory comments from the manzanita lovers (among which I include myself, without being a fan). The most curious, you can see all the discussions directly in the post.

The new HP Z820 (RED Edition), will be built to customer specifications, and will be sold through ProMax and TEKSERVE (which ironically is an Apple specialist in New York and an HP distributor).

The idea of the companies is that you can create your own workstation, ready to work with RED material at full speed right out of the box. One of the driving forces behind this proposal was Adobe, who were looking to create a system that would be a reference for RED workflows (quite CPU and GPU intensive) in the new and MUCH improved Adobe Premiere.

Main characteristics

Now comes the really interesting part:

Based on the 16-core Z820, it has two RED MAG front-end readers, NVIDIA, one or more RED ROCKET accelerator cards, RAM expandable to 512 GB and Adobe CS6 Production Premium inside.

Working with Adobe software will enable NVIDIA graphics acceleration and Adobe Mercury Playback, which runs on NVIDIA’s CUDA and OpenCL architecture, enhancing the processing of Premiere Pro CS6.

Depending on your budget, you can opt for NVIDIA Maximus, for processes such as color correction, to achieve higher acceleration.

Like the Z820, these systems will be made from three different basic models. Each will have a RED ROCKET card and at least one RED MAG reader. The default RAM will be 32 GB, expandable up to 512 GB, demonstrating amazing expandability.

Orders can be placed with TEKSERVE and ProMax distributors starting next week and deliveries will begin in July.

The starting price of these systems will be around $10,000.

This is an example of a possible model given by the companies:

HPZ820, 16 cores 3.21GHz, liquid cooled, 32GB 1600MHz Quad Channel memory, Nvidia Quadro 5000, RED ROCKET, one Internal BluRay/REDMAG reader, 300GB, 2.5″ 10K SAS 6Gb boot drive, HP 3-3-3 global warranty on components (has no RAID volume, will need to be added by TEKSERVE or ProMax).

 

RED knows that many of its users will not choose to switch to Windows, but they also assure that “once the PC is running, the applications run in the same way as on Mac”. In fact, REDCINE will run better on Windows, as it is optimized for these processors. The company assures that in no way does this release indicate RED’s departure from this platform, and they assure that they continue to have a strong and positive relationship with Apple. However, they also state that over several years the Mac towers have not had significant changes, so they should start looking for new options and not “sit back and watch the grass grow”.

Reduser.net also makes some references to the progress that Adobe has shown in its software and that Apple has had lately (is it because of Final Cut X?).

To conclude this topic, after the release of Apple’s news, questions were raised that Adobe should perhaps reconsider features that require high-end hardware, should Apple continue to focus on notebooks and not Mac Pros. It seems that what they have done is rethink the entire platform, not the features of their software.

Both Adobe and HP (which recently released other Workstations such as the Z220 or the EliteBook W series) have been making headway and gaining ground on Apple, responding to the demand of professionals.