HP Z2 SFF G8 Workstation Review

The HP Z family has been a stalwart line of professional-grade PCs created to meet the needs of intensive use applications like those used by design professionals and data scientists. With the new G8 series of systems (yes, HP jumped from G5 to G8) HP launches with the new Intel 11th Gen Core (Rocket Lake) CPUs and Ampere graphics from NVIDIA. Today’s launch includes two new workstations, the Z2 Tower G8, and the system we have in the lab for this review, the HP Z2 SFF G8 Workstation.

The HP Z family has been a stalwart line of professional-grade PCs created to meet the needs of intensive use applications like those used by design professionals and data scientists. With the new G8 series of systems (yes, HP jumped from G5 to G8) HP launches with the new Intel 11th Gen Core (Rocket Lake) CPUs and Ampere graphics from NVIDIA. Today’s launch includes two new workstations, the Z2 Tower G8, and the system we have in the lab for this review, the HP Z2 SFF G8 Workstation.

HP Z2 SFF G8 vs. G5 – What’s New

Of course, the Z2 SFF G8 benefits from most of the uplift that the new Intel platform provides. The trouble with small form factor (SFF) platforms at times though, is due to the smaller chassis, compromises have to be made. You simply can’t fit a full-height full-length GPU in this chassis or select the most powerful CPUs that require more power draw and cooling. The Tower Z2 G8 is designed for those mainstream needs. On the other hand, these SFF systems are designed for professionals that run apps that require a high degree of performance but are space-constrained.  With the Z2 SFF G8, HP has managed that dance extremely well.

Let’s start with the CPU. The Z2 SFF Gen8 uses the Intel W580 chipset and supports a wide range of processors. Specifically, HP has support for 125W 8-core processors with frequencies up to 5.2GHz with Turbo Boost, 2.5GHz base frequency in the Intel i9-11900F. These systems also support the Intel K series processors as well, for those who want a little more pop. The Intel i9-11900K delivers 3.5GHz base with Turbo Boost notching 5.3GHz. For those wanting a Xeon option, HP has you there with support for up to a Xeon W-1390P.

Looking at storage, the HP Z2 SFF G8 gets access to PCIe Gen4, which doubles the bandwidth from Gen3. It has one onboard NVMe Gen4 M.2 slot, which can now house a speedy HP Z Turbo Drive. Another M.2 slot is also available, but with a slower Gen3 speed. Our configuration shipped with a 512GB Gen4 SSD and a 1TB SATA HDD, for those times when you need a spinner for extra capacity. Overall there are a number of combinations when it comes to storage. The Z2 SFF G8 supports up to three hard drive bays and twin M.2 NVMe ports.

DRAM gets an upgrade in this system too, with support for up to 128GB DDR4 memory at an increased memory speed of up to 3200MHz. There are four DIMM slots on the board. Our system is populated with two 16GB modules.

HP Z2 SFF G8 Specifications

HP Z2 SFF G8 Design and Build

HP Z2 SFF G8 Performance

In order to gauge the performance of the HP Z2 SFF G8, we put it through a series of resource-intensive tests with the following configuration:

• Intel Core I7-11700K 8C CPU
• 32GB of RAM (2 x 16GB)
• NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000
• Z Turbo 512GB PCIe M.2

We will also be comparing it to the HP Z2 Mini G5, which features an Intel i7-10700K, 2x16GB of DDR4 RAM, an NVIDIA Quadro T2000, and two Z Turbo 2280 NVMe SSDs. As we mentioned above, the G8 brings with it some of the enhancements the new Intel platform offers, including the Intel W580 chipset. Moreover, one of the more significant differences in components is the GPU, as the RTX 3000 is a newer and higher-end professional graphics card.

Though its components don’t quite match up with the SFF G8 (which will show in our benchmarks), the older Mini G5 system can be configured with faster 10-core CPU options as well as the same RTX 3000 GPU. That said, Mini G5 hadn’t been updated to the new generation of Intel components during its production and it really comes down to form factor and expansion for its targeted use cases.

To kick off testing, since the HP Z2 SFF G8 offers a Gen4 NVME M.2 SSD we looked at the storage speed of the Z Turbo SSD supplied with the system. While the variant in our system is a Samsung OEM model, results may vary depending on the actual drive supplied with the system. We measured a read speed of 5.2GB/s and a write speed of 4.23GB/s from our boot drive.

First up is the SPECviewperf 2020 benchmark, the worldwide standard for measuring graphics performance of professional applications running under the OpenGL and Direct X application programming interfaces. The viewsets (or benchmarks) represent graphics content and behavior from actual applications, without having to install the applications themselves. The newest version of this benchmark went through some major updates late last year, including new viewsets taken from traces of the latest versions of 3ds Max, Catia, Maya, and Solidworks applications. In addition, they added support within all viewsets for both 2K and 4K resolution displays.

As you can see, there were huge gains in performance over the G5 when outfitted with the new RTX 3000 mobile professional graphics card. For scale though, you can see what the higher-end GPUs like the RTX 8000 have to offer.

Moving on with our performance benchmarks, we ran SPECworkstation3. This is a test that specializes in benchmarks designed for testing all key aspects of workstation performance; it uses over 30 workloads to test CPU, graphics, I/O, and memory bandwidth. The workloads fall into broader categories such as Media and Entertainment, Financial Services, Product Development, Energy, Life Sciences, and General Operations. We are going to list the broad-category results for each, as opposed to the individual workloads. The results are an average of all the individual workloads in each category.

Next up is Blender, an open-source 3D modeling application. This benchmark was run using the Blender Benchmark utility. NVIDIA OptiX was the chosen render method. The score is in seconds, with lower being better. Across the board, the newer Quadro RTX 3000 offered huge gains over the Quadro T2000 inside the X2 Mini G5. In many cases, speeds were in excess of 2-3x faster.

Another 3D benchmark we will be looking at is LuxMark, an OpenCL GPU benchmarking utility. We’ve used the newest version, v4alpha0. Again the HP Z2 SFF G8 with the RTX 3000 offered big gains over the T2000, although the lead was slimmer on food.

Our last test is the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) benchmark. Esri is a supplier of Geographic Information System (GIS) software. Esri’s Performance Team designed their PerfTool add-in scripts to automatically launch the ArcGIS Pro. This application uses a “ZoomToBookmarks” function to browse various pre-defined bookmarks and create a log file with all the key data points required to predict the user experience. The script automatically loops the bookmarks three times to account for caching (memory and disk cache). In other words, this benchmark simulates heavy graphical use that one might see through Esri’s ArcGIS Pro software.

The tests consist of three main datasets: two are 3-D city views of Philadelphia, PA and Montreal, QC, which contain textured 3-D multipatch buildings draped on a terrain model and draped aerial images. The third dataset is a 2-D map view of the Portland, OR region. This data contains detailed information for roads, landuse parcels, parks and schools, rivers, lakes, and hillshaded terrain.

First is the Montreal model, where the Z2 G8 had slight gains over the previous gen, with an average drawtime of 00:01:30.19, an average FPS of 199.94, and a minimum FPS of 101.01.

Next up is our Philly model, where the Z2 G8 posted an average drawtime, average FPS and minimum FPS of 00:01:00.19, 139.94, and 91.43, respectively.

Our last model is of Portland. Here, the Z2 G8 posted slight gains over the older generation Z2 with an average drawtime, average FPS, and minimum FPS of 00:00:30.561, 1,823.17 and 610.14, respectively.

Conclusion

The HP Z2 SFF G8 manages to provide quite a bit of configurability alongside support for dedicated graphics, PCIe expansion slots and support for faster DRAM, PCIe Gen4 speeds (in some slots) and the rest of the uplift from the Intel Rocket Lake launch. Working with the HP Z2 SFF G8 over the last week has been interesting though. The SFF design is inherently all about compromises, and we see that throughout the Z2 SFF.

The bigger 450W power supply drives the 125W CPU and dedicated GPU, with enough left over for an SSD, a couple of HDDs and PCIe devices that can live off x4 power in the PCIe slots. But on the other hand, we only get one Gen4 M.2 SSD, the other is Gen3 and the lone Gen4 PCIe slot is taken by the GPU which is operating at Gen3. The system supports ZCentral Remote Boost of course, but if we wanted to put this in the rack, we can’t get 100GbE AND the GPU because we’re limited on slots with x16 electrical, 25GbE though is still an option though. Overall when you look at performance this platform has a lot to offer and gets around certain size constraints with a mobile-targeted GPU in a desktop form factor. Gen4 storage speeds are a big plus, and the dedicated low-power Quadro RTX 3000 help out across the board.

That’s not to say the HP Z2 SFF G8 falls short though, it just is what it is. An entry Z workstation that has a good deal of configuration flexibility, with several 8-core CPU options, discrete GPU and Gen4 M.2 SSD slot. There will be a lot of use cases where this SFF system will fit very well. For others, HP has systems both smaller with the Z2 Mini line and their standard full-fledge towers.

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