Workstation

When we first got our hands on the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, we were bowled over by the challenge it poses for Intel’s top-end Core i7 processors. Intel may have taken up that challenge with the announcement of the Core i9, but despite this the most astonishing feature of Ryzen …

A year, almost to the day, after launching the original Radeon Pro Duo dual-chip workstation-class graphics card, AMD has announced a refresh to its professional line-up. During the NAB 2017 show (an event for the broadcasting industry) in Las Vegas yesterday, AMD announced a new version of the Radeon Pro Duo …

Inside is a quad-core processor, professional NVIDIA Quadro graphics, and two storage devices. Its less than 2kg.

The Intel Broadwell-E generation is where the top end of the enthusiast market crosses over into the professional space. MSI’s X99A Workstation motherboard is based on the same consumer-oriented Intel X99 chipset as its high-end gaming products, rather than the business-focused C612, but with extra features aimed at the workstation …

ASRock has really upped its game over the last few years. A decade ago, the company was most successful at the budget end of the market. But that image has long gone. Recently, we looked at a decidedly high-end X99 chipset board in the shape of the ASRock X99 WS-E/10G. …

Motherboards aimed at professional usage have quite different requirements to those aimed at consumer activities like gaming. For a start, whilst gamers are swiftly moving onto the Z170 chipset and Intel Skylake procesors, because quad-core is usually enough, workstations have generally stuck with X99 and Haswell E processors, due to …

The NVIDIA Quadro M4000 has been out since August, but as the successor to the K4200, it’s the flagship mainstream professional graphics card. So we are reviewing it here to show how it compares to its predecessor (and the higher-end K5200). In terms of specification, it’s another step forward, despite …

Boxx Technologies, a well-known maker of workstations from the U.S., has introduced its new Apexx 1 mini-ITX workstation that can integrate an Intel Xeon microprocessor with up to 18 cores or a factory-overclocked Intel Core i7 chip with up to eight cores. The system comes with a specially-designed cooling solution …

Hewlett-Packard has introduced its new-generation entry-level Z-series workstations that use a variety of new technologies, including Intel Corp.’s latest microprocessors. The new machines can run serious tasks, yet they feature compact sizes and relatively affordable price-points. The HP Z240 Tower and Z240 SFF [small form-factor] workstations are based on Intel’s …

Scan will be well-known to KitGuru readers for its huge and comprehensive component supply business. But the company has also been building professional workstations for many years. The 3XS range includes both enthusiast systems for gamers as well as rack-mount servers and high-performance computing nodes. The 3XS GW-HTX35 is a …

Overclockers is a company that will be better known here at KitGuru for its choice selection of enthusiast components and lovingly enhanced gaming systems. But the ability to put together a quality system is potentially something of interest to the professional market as well as more entertainment-oriented users. With one …

Sales of personal computers have been on the decline for several quarters now and the first half of 2015 was particularly bad for the PC supply chain. However, according to Intel Corp. and analysts from Citigroup, the demand for PCs has bottomed and is now stabilizing. Moreover, Intel’s new “Skylake” …

So far in this series, we have made some initial tests and conclusions about the balance between CPU and graphics in a workstation, and then focused specifically on the types of application covered by the industry-standard SPECviewperf 12.02 tests. In this article, we turn our attention to two very significant …

It looks like Lenovo is getting serious about portable workstations as its new Thinkpad P50 and P70 laptops come equipped with Intel Xeon processors and 4K panels. In addition to that, the systems are running Nvidia’s professional Quadro graphics chips as well. Under the hood, you will find the Intel …

In the second part of this series, we presented some initial tests to illustrate how CPU and graphics can affect different types of performance in a PC workstation. In this third part, we focus down on one particular, industry-standard benchmark that puts a workstation through a range of tests with …

From the advent of affordable internet in the 90s to the explosion of broadband services over the past 5 years, content has been getting better and better. From building designers to game developers, from training companies to broadcasting organisations, everyone is processing larger and larger media files and regularly sharing them …

As we explained in our introduction to this series, workstations are considerably more than just powerful PCs. Brute performance may be the basis of a system you intend to use for high-end desktop computing tasks like 3D animation, CAD/CAM, engineering and product design. But there is much more to a …

Although Gigabyte has more of a name for its internal components than anything else, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a business focus too and with the likes of HP and several of its contemporaries focusing on offering software and data analytics these days, clearly there’s a little more room …

On a small scale, many of us have seen nVidia’s GRID gaming in action – in the guise of Shield. The principal is simple: Centralise the hardcore processing and provide entertainment to users on (almost) any device they wish to use. Steve Tyson is the Cloud Gaming guru for Supermicro and …

Professional graphics workstations are aimed at creative professionals who are supposed to generate beautiful visuals and inspiring designs. Ironically, virtually all workstations lack any creative touch themselves, whether it is about style or enhancements in terms of performance. Overclockers UK decided to change that with Renda family of workstations. The …

The market of discrete graphics processing units for desktops and laptops has been shrinking for many years now. Integrated graphics solutions from AMD and Intel can satisfy general demands of end-users, which is why many modern PCs do not have standalone graphics adapters. Moreover, general market trends will further decrease …

Nvidia Corp. on Tuesday refreshed the lineup of Quadro professional graphics cards. The new graphics boards are based on either Kepler or Maxwell architectures, will offer higher performance than predecessors as well as a number of new capabilities that will significantly change the way people use professional graphics cards. The …

The workstation market is a bit like a parallel universe compared to mainstream desktop computing. But technological developments work both ways. Armari’s Magnetar M16E-AW1200-GPU is the first system we have seen with AMD’s new FirePro W8100, based on the Hawaii PRO GPU. The Hawaii PRO first saw the light of …

Toshiba Corp. this week unveiled the industry’s first 15.6” laptop with ultra-high-definition display that has earned Technicolor colour certification. The laptop is designed for both creative professionals as well as multimedia enthusiasts who want to enjoy video, photos and applications in resolution never available before on laptops. The new Toshiba …

Micron Technology, one of the world’s leading makers of dynamic random access memory, said Wednesday that it had started to produce next-generation DDR4 memory in volume. The company and its partners will begin to officially ship servers featuring Intel Corp.’s Xeon E5-2600 v3 and Micron’s DDR4 memory in the second …

Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday introduced its first professional graphics card based on the code-named “Hawaii” graphics processing unit. The new solution for CAD, CAM, DCC and other professionals boasts unbeatable DP FP compute performance in addition to whopping 16GB of memory and six 4K display outputs. As expected, the …

One of the biggest releases of 2014 will be the Hollywood extravaganza Jupiter Ascending. With a special effects budget likely to be larger than the GDP of some small countries, you might be wondering what kind of hardware sits in the background to make it all possible. KitGuru got some …

Building on what was good about the M-Cube WS we reviewed recently, YOYOTech has tried to fit even more processing power into an unfeasibly small package with the M-Cube WS2. Where the M-Cube WS opted for a frequency-enhanced Core i5, the M-Cube WS2 takes a more traditional workstation approach, using …

In the recent years Advanced Micro Devices has been extraordinary slow with advancements of its professional graphics cards line. To a large degree, this is a result of overall slow progress of discrete GPU performance these days, but for those who need performance now this hardly matters. The situation may …

The 3D graphics workstation is supposed to be big, black and expensive, like the Green Hornet’s gadget car. But YOYOTech clearly hasn’t read that particular script with the M-Cube WS. The model we were sent was not only about half the size of the average workstation, but half the price …