Workstation Computer News And Product Reviews
Workstations enable high performance computing for a multitude of use cases, from content creation to scientific computing, industrial design and more. Workstations are no compromise, high reliability type systems that are purposed-built to get work done and create amazing things with all-digital tools.
In October of last year, when Intel officially unveiled its 9th Generation Core series processors, the company also took the opportunity to announce a semi-new breed of workstation processor, namely the Xeon W-3175X. Technically speaking, the architecture at the heart of the Xeon W-3175X isn’t new – the monstrous 28-core / 56-thread processor is based on Skylake-SP, just like the first wave of Xeon Scalable processors that were released in 2017. What Intel has done with the Xeon W-3175X, however, is selectivity bin the die and tweak and tune the power and turbo boost profiles to increase frequencies, and ultimately performance, versus earlier Skylake-SP parts. The Xeon W-3175X is...
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It’s evolving. Alienware’s Area-51 is back with new upgrades to accommodate Intel’s most demanding enthusiast CPU yet – the Core i9-7980XE. Sure, on the surface everything seems similar to previous iterations of the machine, but within something new courses through its veins. The new Alienware Area-51 R5 arrives with liquid cooled GPUs for the first time since the brand was introduced. This is the natural next-step for one of the most powerful gaming desktops. Additional cooling should allow for more performance to be squeezed out of its already impressive hardware to tackle more demanding graphics workloads. The Skylake-X flagship CPU inside is joined by twin NVIDIA GeForce...
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We were first introduced to NVIDIA's 12nm Volta GV100 GPU architecture back in early May 2017 when the Tesla V100 Accelerator debuted. NVIDIA later extended its GV100 GPU to the Titan V (you can read the HotHardware review here), which is aimed at professional and academic deep learning applications. Now, NVIDIA is ready to unleash the Quadro GV100, which brings Volta GPU architecture to the company's lineup of professional graphics cards. NVIDIA is really throwing down the hammer with the Quadro GV100, as the graphics card has 32GB of HBM2 onboard, which is scalable to a 64GB addressable frame buffer when using two-way NVLink interconnect technology (basically slapping two GPUs together). On...
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Gigabit Ethernet has been a long-running standard on desktop PCs and in mainstream networking gear. In fact, it’s been almost two decades since gigabit network controllers appeared on desktops systems. Aquantia Corporation is looking to muscle into the space, however, with a pair of brand new network interface cards that offer multi-gigabit network speeds – and they can do so on existing wiring.“Historically, networking capabilities, such as Gigabit Ethernet introduced in PCs in 2000, defined a significant stepping stone in the PC evolution. But for the past 17 years, that Ethernet port has stagnated at 1 Gigabit, and become a bottleneck for IT professionals, gamers, and performance users at...
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Soon after unveiling the Tesla V100 data center GPU based on its next-generation Volta architecture at GTC 2017, NVIDIA CEO Jen Hsun Huang announced an updated, Volta-infused DGX-1 server appliance for deep learning data center deployment, along with a totally new product, the NVIDIA DGX Station, that’s being dubbed a ‘Personal AI Supercomputer’.The new NVIDIA DGX-1 is similar to the previous generation offering based on Pascal, but is powered by eight Tesla V100s GPUs, linked together via next-gen NVIDIA NVLink interconnect technology that ups the bandwidth per GPU to 300GB/s. The rest of the system consists of dual, 20-core Intel Xeon E5-2698 CPUs, 512GB of RAM, four 1.92TB SSDs in RAID 0,...
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Whenever Intel releases a new processor architecture, it typically focuses first on consumers and then rolls out Xeon counterparts that are suitable for entry-level workstations. So it goes with Kaby Lake. Having launched its first batch of desktop Kaby Lake chips for consumers just two months ago, Intel today announced its new Xeon E3-1200 V6 family based on the same architecture. To kick things off, it's launching eight Xeon E3-1200 V6 processors ranging in base clockspeed from 3GHz to 3.9GHz, all of which are quad-core processors. Six of them support Hyper Threading. Perhaps more importantly, these are mostly affordable chips—pricing starts at $193, and while the top-end part runs $612, the...
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Lenovo Announces ThinkStation P320 Workstations With Kaby Lake And Quadro Graphics For VR Developers
Lenovo is pitching the emerging interest in virtual reality as a reason for developers to consider its new ThinkStation P320 workstations. The world's top PC maker (in terms of market share) used Develop3D Live as the launchpad for its new systems, which featured Intel Xeon and 7th generation Core i3/i5/i7 (Kaby Lake) processor options paired with NVIDIA Quadro graphics. Buyers can opt for a full-tower enclosure supporting up to a Quadro P4000 (Pascal) graphics card, or a small form factor (SFF) setup with up to two Quadro P1000 GPUs. Either setup can be configured with an Intel Xeon E3-1200 v6 processor or a Core i3/i5/i7 chip based on Kaby Lake, with speeds of up to 4.5GHz via Turbo Boost....
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A couple of weeks back, NVIDIA unveiled a family of new professional Quadro cards, based on the company’s Pascal GPU architecture. The latest additions to the Quadro line-up run the gamut in terms of features and capabilities, from the low-power, small form factor Quadro P400 to the gargantuan, ultra-powerful Quadro GP100. Smack dab in the middle of the line-up are a pair of mid-range offerings, the Quadro P4000 and Quadro P2000, which we’ll be featuring here.The Quadro P4000 and P2000 are both single-slot, capable solutions that target more mainstream professional-graphics market segments, very much like the AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 and WX 7100 we recently evaluated. We’ve got the Quadro P4000’s...
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The same awesome architecture that powers NVIDIA's latest generation graphics cards can now be found throughout the maker's entire professional Quadro line for the desktop with top to bottom solutions. We're of course talking about Pascal, the game-changing architecture that made playing titles at a 4K resolution on a single graphics card possible. Pascal now powers half a dozen more Quadro cards that flesh out its existing lineup. Having access to Pascal on the engineering side will provide a boost in performance in several categories. VR, photo-realism, and deep learning technologies, all of which are trending in the professional arena right now, feature bigger data sets and are more complex...
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NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture has been wildly successful in the consumer space. The various GPUs that power the GeForce GTX 10 series are all highly competitive at their respective price points, and the higher-end variants are currently unmatched by any single competing GPU. That may change when AMD launches GPUs based on its next-generation Vega architecture, but that won’t happen for a few more months, so cards like the GeForce GTX 1080 and TITAN X will continue to dominate benchmark charts at least for a little while longer. NVIDIA has since retooled Pascal for the professional workstation market as well, with products that make even the GeForce GTX 1080 and TITAN X look quaint in comparison....
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AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100, 5100 And 4100 Series Workstation Graphics Review: Polaris Goes Pro [Updated]
Update 12/20/2016 - This article has been updated with AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 benchmarks and information. The Radeon Pro WX 7100 is currently the highest-end card in AMD's Pro WX series line-up. AMD initially unveiled the Polaris-based Radeon Pro WX-series of professional workstation graphics cards all the way back in July at SIGGRAPH. Along with the initial announcement, AMD also disclosed that all of the cards would be built and sold by AMD exclusively, that the cards would carry 10-year warranties, and be backed by 24/7 VIP support. The FirePro brand would eventually be phased out as well, with the Radeon Pro moniker taking over as the company's pro graphics branding. Radeon Pro...
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We’ve been hearing about AMD’s next-generation Zen-based processors for quite a while now, though the company just officially announced that desktop and mobile variants will be branded RYZEN. Over the past few months, we’ve seen Zen in action in both high-performance desktop and server applications and have been able to disclose a handful of features, specifications, and performance details. Today however, with AMD poised to host its “New Horizon” webcast, we have some more information to share related to the RYZEN branding, the ZEN architecture, and AM4 platform as a whole. First and foremost is the actual branding for its Zen-based processors for desktops, formerly codenamed “Summit Ridge”....
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Gigabyte, Corsair and Intel held a press event in California on June 30th to show off some of their new hardware. Though Intel just talked broadly about its thoughts on the PC gaming market (it's growing, and they are committed to it, basically), Gigabyte and Corsair both demo'd high-end gear it first unveiled at Computex. We were on-hand to check everything out, and have the details lined up for you here. First up, we have some video of many of the products... IntelIntel didn't have anything new to show, but wanted to reiterate its commitment to the PC gaming and high-end desktop spaces, as evidenced by its new Broadwell-E platform. Intel's Desktop Director, Heath Winston, spoke about the growth...
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A few weeks back, during its GPU Technology Conference, NVIDIA announced a new Quadro-branded graphics card for the professional workstation market. That card is the Quadro M2000 we’ll be showing you here today. The Quadro M2000 is a low-power pro graphics solution featuring a GPU based on NVIDIA’s Maxwell architecture. In fact, it’s the very same GPU used on one of the more mainstream GeForce GTX-branded cards. However, with the Quadro M2000, additional features and capabilities are enabled through NVIDIA's Quadro software/driver suite and the card’s particular hardware configuration.The Quadro M2000’s main features and specifications are listed in the table below. We’ll follow those up with...
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