When the time came recently to upgrade the computer hardware for my developer workstation, it got me wondering what the average specifications are of dev workstations "in the field".  Through the use of twitter and linkedin, I reached out to several colleagues to conduct a very informal survey, to see what kind of horsepower they were running these days.  For all the respondents, they are full time employees and are not owners or consultants, so they typically don't make or influence the hardware purchase decision, they merely use daily what they are given.

In general, the results indicated that most were using a machine with specs similar to this:

Core i7 CPU @ ~2.67GHz, 2 Cores, 4 Logical cores, 8GB RAM, 7200 RPM Hard Drive

Upon doing some more research on the topic, I found this blog post on MSDN that discusses the hardware requirements for VS2010.  I also found myself referencing this blog from Jeff Atwood, that discusses a programmers "Bill of Rights" which includes some commentary on workstation hardware.

The basic theme I found in all that I read was, it does not really make sense to buy the bleeding edge, latest technology.  However, it is a very good idea to outfit your devs with the best hardware you can afford.

An argument in favour of this is a review of cost and productivity.

Some considerations on developer hardware:

$25/hr x 1 min/hr saved by faster hardware = $0.42 per hour

37 hrs/week * 52 weeks = 1,924 hours / year / developer

1,924 hrs * $0.42 per hour = $808.08 / year / developer

$808.08 * 20 devs = $16,161.60 total cost of lost productivity

So, if a more powerful dev workstation saved each dev only 1 minute of unproductive time per hour, that would result in a return of over $800/yr in increased productivity.

I highly suspect that the 1 min/hour is a conservative estimate.  I also suspect that for most locales, $25/hr for a professional software developer is also conservative.

If you used $40/hr instead, you would save $0.67/hr or $1,289.08 / year / developer.  That would be $25,781.60/yr for a team of 20 devs.

The ROI for fast dev machines seems apparent.

Benchmarks:

Now for the discussion about how much time a developer would actually save by having a faster machine.  I got some inspiration for doing some benchmarks from this blog by Scott Hanselman.  I used his idea of using the NHibernate.Everything.sln and source for benchmarking the machines that I had easy access to and the results of this are shown in Scenario 1.  I then added to the mix some other scenarios that developers in our organization might be likely to do in their day to day work, with our source code.  When using MSBuild.exe I used the /t:rebuild switch as well as the /m switch for parallel builds in B scenarios.

Results Comments

Scenario 1

Builds the source code for the open source project Nhibernate.  Parallel builds seems to have a small effect here, as shown in differences between 1A and 1B results.  Machine #1 is on average 41% faster than Machine #2.  For every hour of compile time, an extra 25 minutes would be saved by using the faster machine.

Scenario 2

Builds the database project for a single database.  Parallel builds seems to have a negligible effect here, as shown in a lack of differences between 2A and 2B results.  This makes sense since there is only 1 project to build.  Machine #1 is on average 44% faster than Machine #2.  For every hour of compile time, an extra 26 minutes would be saved by using the faster machine. 

Scenario 3

Deploys the database project from Scenario 2 to SQL Server, actually creating the database.  I do not believe that parallel processing is possible for database project deployments.  Machine #1 is on average 59% faster than Machine #2.  For every hour of time spent deploying databases, an extra 35 minutes would be saved by using the faster machine.   

Scenario 4

Builds the database projects for 5 databases and one shared server database project.  Parallel processing has a significant effect here, as a lack of dependencies between database projects allows a multi-core machine to build the projects concurrently instead of one after the other.  Machine #1 is on average 58% faster than Machine #2 for Scenario 4.  For every hour of time spent building the full database solution, an extra 35 minutes would be saved by using the faster machine.  Considering Scenario 4B only, when leveraging multiple cores and parallelism, Machine #1 is on average 69% faster than Machine #2 for Scenario 4B.  For every hour of time spent building the full database solution, an extra 41 minutes would be saved by using the faster machine.       

Final Thoughts

It seems that providing good quality workstations to your developers can result in increased productivity, that should more than cover the extra cost of acquiring faster hardware.

 

This story actually starts over a year ago when I decided that I might like to upgrade my computer.  I used to be an avid gamer... that dried up a little, but partly because my hardware was a little deficient for the latest titles.  I don't play XBox or any of the other consoles... I just never got into them.  When I do play video games, they are on the computer.  These days, it is probably more like 85% power user and 15% gamer.  I don't need the latest and greatest hardware, but it is a nice indulgence once in a while.

As I said, I started doing my research for new hardware over a year ago.  I got about half way through picking components, and got sidetracked by something else.  By the time I got back to it a couple weeks ago, I had to start all over again.

For this upgrade I would be replacing almost the entire box and its contents.  First a look at what I am replacing:

• AMD Athlon 64 3400+ CPU @ 2.2GHz (socket 754)
• ABIT KV8 Pro v1.1 motherboard
• 1GB RAM Kingston Value RAM PC3200
• 200 GB Western Digital Caviar SATA WD2000JD Hard Drive (Configured with a 12GB System partition and a 188GB Data partition)
• DVD-RW - NEC ND-3500A
• ATI All-In-Wonder X800XT Video Card
• Cambridge Soundworks 4 Point Surround speakers
  
• Windows XP SP2

It is a bit funny to look back now.  I first got the CPU in November 2004.  Back then, 64-bit computing was going to be all the rage, and I thought my purchase would help to future-proof my machine.  Well, here we are 4 years later, and the machine never did see a 64 bit operating system.  Only now are 64 bits becoming more adopted and stable/supported enough to make the switch.

During this round of research, I was surprised to discover that SLI (Scalable Link Interface for the semi-techs - "hooking up multiple graphics cards together so they work as one" for the non-techs) had made a comeback.  However, I was disappointed to find out that NVidia had held exclusive licensing rights which meant the only chipset that supported SLI was the NVidia nForce chipsets.  Based on what I read, these chipsets are generally of lesser quality than their Intel based competition.  So it seems that choosing a motherboard/chipset now required you to choose which video card manufacturer would get your business (ATI or NVidia), because if you wanted to support SLI (or CrossFireX) then support from the motherboard was required.

This powerplay by NVidia has finally come to an end with the X58 chipset from Intel.  This is the latest chipset that supports the latest socket 1366 Core i7 CPU's recently released from Intel.  These processors are quad core and represent the first round in some fundamental changes to CPU architecture, compared with their predacessors.

Now normally, I am an analytical, common sense kinda guy.  I don't buy brand new cars... I buy 1 year old with 30,000 KM on them.  The same goes for computer hardware, don't buy the latest, greatest model of anything otherwise you pay through the nose now, and in 6 months, the same item can be had for 1/2 the price.  I would much rather buy the 2nd generation product and save money.

<beginJustification>
This time, I couldn't get over the NVidia chipset thing.  I wanted to try NVidia video card(s) this time, because I had seen first hand some of the low quality drivers/software created by ATI over the years.  To be fair, my research indicated that ATI has gotten better in the last year or two... but I still wanted to try walking on the green grass on the other side of the fence this time.  Choosing NVidia meant wanting to support SLI (just in case I ever move to 2 cards).  Supporting SLI meant being forcefed the nForce chipset, or bite the expensive bullet and jump to the top of price mountain and go for the X58 chipset that supports both SLI and CrossFireX.  Guess what I did.
</beginJustification>

Edit: Well, about 2 or 3 weeks after buying my nVidia GTX280 based video card, they mothballed that model in favour of the GTX285.  I guess I won't be going SLI anytime soon.  I do still like the versatility of supporting both ATI and nVidia though.

Now, for a look at what I upgraded to:

• Intel Core i7 920
• ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard
• 6GB RAM G.Skill PC10666 triple channel
• 150GB Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS (10,000 RPM for System Drive)
• 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black (Data Drive)
  
• DVD-RW - NEC ND-3500A
• XFX GTX280 1024MB Video Card
• Coolermaster Stacker 830 Evolution case
  
• Logitech X-540 5.1 Speakers
• Windows Vista Business x64

So far, things are running great, and I am happy with the upgrade.