[buro9]

I have an 8-core HP Z800 with 24GB RAM.

For me it's not about improving the speed of end user applications.

My usage is simple, virtualisation.

I have 6 VMs currently fired up, 1 with Oracle installed, a couple of Linux boxes to run an ESB and the remainder run SharePoint on Windows Server.

I wanted each of those to perform pretty well and not be a dev bottleneck (waiting for stuff to happen) and so I've assigned at 1+ cores per VM as well as at 2+GB RAM per VM (Oracle gets more of both). I try and balance my handing out of hardware resource to reduce the amount of scheduling that the system will have to perform between virtual machines... hence, I wanted as many cores as possible and a good chunk of RAM to go with it.

It was cheaper to buy a single high powered workstation than it was to buy 6 cheap servers. Another huge factor was that the running costs (power) and environment (heat generated in the front room + the cabling and physical space + volume in decibels) of a single workstation beat those 6 cheap boxes.