CADplace attended the unveiling of the new generation of Dell Precision workstations and gathered first-hand the details and benefits of these new systems for you. Of course CADplace knows the AMD team as well and has interviewed, filmed, and reported on FirePro graphics detailing the features, performance and benefits.
So we were happy to get our hands on this technical document produced by the experts at Develop3D which clearly and concisely outlines the benefits of these systems for professionals in multiple domains and also clearly identifies an appropriate configuration - and why - for different specialties in CAD, CAM, CAE, and Design.
In this technical report, Develop3D starts with the workstation - the completely redesigned Intel Xeon E5 Precision workstations. There are four desktop systems and each with its own specific benefits for customers. The Precision T1650 is an affordable, powerful, single socket workstation with professional software application certifications. The Precision T3600 provides CAD and design professionals with a powerful, expandable single-socket system, where as the Precision T5600 delivers a dual processor design and greater memory and hard-drive expandability and is particularly suited to design, visualization and rendering. Finally the Dell Precision T7600 supports unbelievable specifications such as 512GB of RAM, eight drive bays and three of the largest most powerful graphics cards.
The systems deliver more benefits. PCI Express Generation 3 is the foundation of a high-speed internal communications system for CPU, memory, and graphics which means faster everything - graphics access, memory utilization, and number-crunching. Not only to the workstations use ECC (Error Correction Code) memory to ensure accurate calculations, they workstations also have Dell's exclusive Reliable Memory Technology which goes a step further in identifying bad memory, isolating it to eliminate memory errors, and alerting the user of a possible problem if a memory module appears to have an issue. And of course all the the Dell Precision workstations benefit from the new version of Intel's Turbo Boost technology.
These systems give you the benefits of Dell and AMD in the office. For professionals on the road there are the new Dell Precision mobile workstations. And for those concerned with secure computing, all of these workstations can be loaded in the data center. The Dell designs are all rack-mountable, and AMD are experts in remote graphics virtualization.
As for professional graphics, the foundations are laid with excellent performance in professional applications as well as testing and certification. Naturally, the graphics represents one of the most critical systems within a workstation for testing and certification. Dell and AMD work together with software vendors to test and certify workstations with the applications you use. Speaking from experience, problems are found - and corrected - before the workstations are even launched to the public. This effort assures customers that they will have the most stable solutions available. And a certified workstation makes it possible for your software vendor to provide you with a professional level of support in the unlikely event that you should personally experience a problem.
When it comes to performance, the FirePro team proves itself with optimizations for professional applications - not only in their own labs, but also in the labs of the software vendors. A perfect example is the special optimizations AMD did in cooperation with PTC for the new release of Creo 2.0. In the video below, PTC's VP Brian Thompson talks about the cooperation between PTC and AMD and the benefits for the customers.
Productivity for you can be delivered through quality (testing and certification), through performance (application optimizations) and also through support for special functionality in a professional working environment. AMD's FirePro delivers that with a feature called Eyefinity. CADplace filmed an exclusive demonstration of a multiple display configuration with FirePro in the AMD France offices. If you are not yet using a multiple display configuration, the talk with colleagues who do. You will quickly understand how much more productive you can be. And for specific examples of a multiple display configuration for different professional domains, just check the Develop 3D technical report.
The Develop 3D technical report details the kinds of Dell Precision workstation and AMD FirePro graphics fit well with different application areas. While these guidelines are general, they give you a good indication of the important aspects of your workstation choices and help you get the right configuration.