AMD Threadripper Pro 5965WX Review: Many-Core Zen 3 Monster

AMD has been tearing it up in the desktop market with its Ryzen 5000 series processors since their release, but news on the Threadripper front has been comparatively quiet. Threadripper and Threadripper Pro 3000 series processors launched all the way back in 2020, and up until a few months ago the company hadn’t been talking much about its many-core powerhouses. After the Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 series arrived, hardcore enthusiasts were eager to see what the architecture could do in an HEDT Threadripper, but alas those processors never materialized. In March of this year, however, AMD announced...

Dell Precision 5470 Packs Alder Lake And Up To An RTX A1000 GPU In A 14-Inch Workstation

by Zak Killian - Thu, Mar 31, 2022

Dell unveiled a whole raft of product announcements today, but surely the most interesting product from the company's new "hybrid work experience" portfolio is the Precision 5470. Dell says that it engineered the new mobile workstation to be both "the most powerful 14-inch workstation in history [as well as] the smallest and thinnest in the world." That's a contentious statement that hinges a bit on your definition of "workstation," but even if it isn't strictly superlative, Dell's Precision 5470 is certainly both powerful and slim. Contrary to the majority of thin and light laptops, which come...

AMD Unveils Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 WX CPUs To Battle Xeon For Workstation Dominance

by Paul Lilly - Tue, Mar 08, 2022

Enthusiasts, power users, and professionals in need of more compute muscle have been patiently awaiting another round of Threadripper. The wait is now over—AMD today unveiled its Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 WX series, a burly stack of high-end desktop (HEDT) chips based on its Zen 3 architecture built to accelerate workstation workloads. Because we can read minds, let us say upfront it's not clear if AMD will also release a non-Pro Threadripper 5000 series at some point. We're not privy to those plans (or lack thereof, if that's the case). At least for the time being, AMD is focusing on the...

AMD Radeon Pro W6400 Review: Low Power RDNA 2 For Budget Workstations

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Feb 01, 2022

A couple of weeks back, AMD launched the Radeon RX 6500 XT, an entry-level GPU targeting mainstream gamers with 1080p displays. The Radeon RX 6500 XT is built around the Navi 24 GPU, which is the smallest discrete graphics processor in AMD’s current RDNA 2 line-up. Navi 24 is manufactured on a 6nm process node, and is comprised of roughly 5.4B transistors, with 16MB of AMD Infinity Cache, and a die size of only 107mm2. That's a tiny piece of silicon, compared to modern, higher-end GPUs. In addition to launching a mainstream gaming GPU, however, AMD also put Navi 24 to work in a freshly-baked...

AMD Radeon Pro W6400 Flexes 6nm RDNA 2 Muscle For Budget And Mid-Range Workstations

by Paul Lilly - Wed, Jan 19, 2022

AMD is fleshing out its current-generation Radeon Pro lineup with RDNA 2 underneath the hood with the introduction of the Radeon Pro W6400. It slides into the lineup beneath the existing Radeon Pro W6600 for medium to high-level workloads, and the Radeon Pro W6800 designed for high to extreme workstation workloads. So what does that mean for the Radeon Pro W6400? A more affordable path into RDNA 2 territory for workstation builds, for one. It also ranks as AMD's first workstation graphics card to feature a GPU built on a 6-nanometer manufacturing process. This is still the same underlying architecture,...

Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 Review: Refined Mobile Workstation

by Chris Goetting - Fri, Nov 12, 2021

If there was a poster child for business-class laptops, it is indisputably the Lenovo ThinkPad. ThinkPad notebooks are well known for their matte-black, no-nonsense designs, but their utility in corporate and industrial settings is more than skin-deep. Lenovo has wisely developed an array of ThinkPad models to address a wide range of use cases, while still being able to keep that distinct ThinkPad feel. This familiarity yields a dependable experience which has cultivated a dedicated following. We have recently reviewed several svelte ThinkPad X Series variations, but today’s offering is more...

AMD Radeon Pro W6600 Review: RDNA 2 Pro-Vis GPU For Less

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Aug 10, 2021

Embargos lifted on Radeon RX 6600 XT reviews this morning, but that mainstream gaming GPU isn’t the only one AMD is pushing out the door today. The Radeon Pro W6600, which was announced back in early June alongside the more powerful Radeon Pro W6800, is also launching today. As its name implies, the Radeon Pro W6600, like its gaming-class Radeon RX 6600 XT counterpart, is a professional workstation GPU that targets more mainstream price points and performance levels than the W6800. The Radeon Pro W6600’s feature set is right in-line with higher-end RDNA 2-based offerings, however, and...

Intel Optane SSD P5800X Review: The Fastest SSD Ever

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Jun 30, 2021

When we reviewed the Intel Optane SSD 905P back in 2018, despite a significant price premium over NAND-based SSDs, we gave the drive and Editor’s Choice award due to its exceptional performance where it mattered most for consumers, e.g. access times and random transfers at low queue depths. Intel Optane solid state drives typically offer much better latency characteristics, more consistent and predicable performance with a variety of workloads -- regardless of how much drive capacity is being used – and their endurance ratings are off the charts. The only caveats with the 905P were...

Radeon Pro W6800 Review: AMD RDNA 2-Infused Workstation Muscle

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jun 08, 2021

AMD is expanding its line-up of RDNA 2-based GPUs today, with a trio of new Radeon Pro graphics cards targeting the professional workstation market. These new Radeon Pro cards leverage the same GPU architecture as their consumer-class Radeon RX-branded counterparts, but Radeon Pros feature completely different designs, go through additional qualification and are certified for a myriad of pro-vis applications. The new line-up is spearheaded by the Radeon Pro W6800. The Radeon Pro W6800 is packing AMD’s current top-end Navi 21 GPU and a beefy 32GB of GDDR6 RAM with ECC support. Though the Radeon...

HP ZBook Fury 15 G7 Review: A Potent Mobile Workstation

by Ben Funk - Tue, May 04, 2021

Normally when people think of "business-class laptops" they envision moderately powerful systems that handle office productivity tasks and web browsing duties with plenty of performance to keep employees productive, but without frivolous cost-adding features. On the flip side, workstations conjure images of tremendously powerful beasts with all the right kinds of excess: plenty of cores, tons of memory, and high-end professional graphics with certified drivers for powerful, mission-critical applications. Somewhere in the middle is the mobile workstation market, where hybrid laptops like the HP...

Lenovo ThinkStation P620 Review: Beastly 64-Core Performance

by Ben Funk - Fri, Apr 02, 2021

When it comes to high-end content creation, time is money. Businesses with employees that are stuck sitting around waiting for compute-intensive tasks to finish, simply can't get as much accomplished as those with speedy hardware that can power through the most demanding tasks. Tons of parallel processing power and professional-tier graphics cards for these scenarios don't come cheap, but they can certainly pay dividends in terms of efficiency and time saved. That's the story of Lenovo's ultra-powerful ThinkStation P620 workstation, which is on our test bench today.  Breaking this system from...

This Crazy 64-Core AMD Threadripper 3990X PC Is The Ultimate Portable Workstation

by Paul Lilly - Fri, Aug 07, 2020

If you want to show up at a LAN party like a boss, it's not enough to roll onto the scene with a set of headphones draped around your neck, a gaming mouse dangling over your shoulder, and an obnoxiously loud mechanical keyboard tucked under your arm while gripping a Monster energy drink in each hand. You won't stand out from the crowd. In order to make an unforgettable entrance, picture yourself strolling into the room with a chunky briefcase, which is not actually a briefcase at all, but a full blown PC with a Threadripper processor inside. Yeah, that's how its done. You could do that with the...

AMD Unveils Ryzen Threadripper Pro Processors To Battle Intel Xeon W

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jul 14, 2020

AMD has offered “PRO” branded Ryzen processors for a number of years. Although the base processor architecture and platform is unchanged versus their standard counterparts, Pro series Ryzen processors enable a number of security, reliability, and manageability features targeted at the enterprise market, where Intel’s competitive vPro-enabled products play. Today, however, AMD is pushing its Pro branding and feature set way up its product stack, with a new line-up of powerful Ryzen Threadripper Pro processors, designed for high-end workstations and creative professionals. Unlike...

AMD Radeon Pro W5500 Review: Navi Pro Graphics For Less

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Apr 10, 2020

AMD is further fleshing out its professional workstation graphics cards line-up, with an additional Navi-based offering that targets a more affordable price point. The Radeon Pro W5500 we will be showing you here offers essentially the same feature set as its more powerful cousin, the Radeon Pro W5700, but it's outfitted with a scaled down GPU, with commensurately lower compute performance. The scaled down GPU, however, also allows for somewhat smaller form factor and lower-power consumption, though the card has a similar amount of on-board graphics memory and higher GPU clocks than the Radeon...

Falcon Northwest Talon Review: A 12-Core Ryzen Powered Battle Station

by Chris Ledenican - Fri, Oct 25, 2019

Update: 11/9/19 - You could WIN a machine just like this, only with a killer Outer Worlds paint job, in our 20th Anniversary Giveaway! Falcon Northwest has been in the boutique PC building game since 1992, but the company's Talon desktop PC didn't hit the market until 1999. Ironically, that's about the time HotHardware.com came into being on the interwebs, but we digress. The first Talon came loaded with a AMD Athlon 500MHz processor, a 13.5GB hard drive, 64MB SDRAM, and the Pièce de résistance: a 3dfx Voodoo3 graphics card. Yeah baby, good times. These specs are laughable by today's standards,...

HP Zbook 14u G6 Review: A Thin, Powerful Mobile Workstation

by Ben Funk - Tue, Sep 17, 2019

The modern work place is everywhere. Thanks to the need to attract top talent, many employers have generous work-from-home policies that allow employees who would normally be stuck in an office, to work from almost anywhere. Without the advent of fast portable PCs to do that work, however, this wouldn't be as easy as folding up a laptop and taking it with you. There are also plenty of road warriors who spend more than half their working lives traveling, and those folks need (or want) good-looking, fast laptop PCs like the HP Zbook 14u G6 we'll be showing you here, to take with them. ...

Intel Xeon W-3175X Review: Supercharged 28-Core Skylake-SP

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Jan 30, 2019

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...

Alienware Area-51 R5 (2018) Review: Liquid Cooled GPUs, Skylake-X Firepower

by Chris Goetting - Fri, Jun 22, 2018

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...

NVIDIA Announces Quadro GV100 Volta-Powered Graphics With RTX Real-Time Ray Tracing Wizardry (Updated)

by Dave Altavilla, Brandon Hill - Tue, Mar 27, 2018

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...

Aquantia Launches Multi-Gigabit NICs For Enthusiast-Class PCs and Professional Workstations

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, May 15, 2017

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...

NVIDIA Volta-Powered DGX-1 And DGX Station AI Supercomputers Debut At GTC 2017

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, May 10, 2017

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...

Intel Kaby Lake Xeon E3-1200 Family Takes Flight

by Paul Lilly - Wed, Mar 29, 2017

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,...

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