10 minute read
34
Scan 3XS GW-MT15
A quality workstation for CAD or BIM, but there is no compelling reason to upgrade from Sandy Bridge
Intel’s ‘Ivy Bridge’ processor did not exactly have CAD users rushing to put in a purchase order. But Intel’s third gen Core processor did offer a small boost in performance and better power efficiency over its predecessor, Sandy Bridge. Compared to the Intel Core i7 2600K, the darling of Intel’s second gen Core family, the new Ivy Bridge Core i7 3770K saves a cool 18W, down from 95W to 77W at peak. Its base clock speed also moves up a notch from 3.4GHz to 3.5GHz.
Not one to be content with off the shelf performance, Bolton-based Scan has done its trademark job of overclocking, taking the quad core i7 Product spec Vertex 2E look somewhat pedestrian. 3770K up to 4.4GHz. The prob■ Intel Core i7 3770K Scan has also upped the lem is, this is 0.1Ghz less than it (3.5GHz overclocked capacity of its companion ‘data’ achieved more than a year ago to 4.4Ghz) (Quad drive and the 2TB Seagate with the ‘Sandy Bridge’ Core i7 Core) (Ivy Bridge) Barracuda 7,200 SATA will 2600K in its Scan 3XS P67 X3D ■ 16GB (2 x 8GB) Corsair PC3-12800 give plenty of space for complex workstation (tinyurl. (1600) memory CAD datasets. Scan has been com/3XSAEC). And despite the ■ Nvidia Quadro equally generous in its memory, small architectural improve- 2000 (1GB GDDR5) delivering 16GB of Corsair PC3ments Intel has made to Ivy graphics 12800 (1600) RAM in 2 x 8GB Bridge our tests show ■ 120GB PNY Professional SSD + 2TB Seagate modules leaving two slots free for future upgrades. performance Barracuda 7,200 HDD Despite approaching its two has literally ■ Gigabyte GA-Z77- year anniversary, the PNY stood still. D3H motherboard Nvidia Quadro 2000 is still a There have been some tweaks in ■ Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit ■ 3 year warranty - 1st year on site, 2nd solid 3D graphics card. It does not reach the heady heights of a Quadro 4000 but remains a other parts of & 3rd year return to good option for mid range CAD Scan’s new base (mechanical and BIM. 3XS workstahard drives only covered for 1st year) Overall, it is hard to fault the tion, most Scan 3XS GW-MT15. It is a good noticeably in £1,208 solid mid-range workstation. terms of stor- 3xs.scan.co.uk Unfortunately, there is no comage. The new pelling reason to upgrade from 120GB PNY last year’s model. I guess those Professional SSD boasts that have invested in an overclocked Sandy excellent performance. Its 550MB/s read Bridge workstation will have to wait for and 520MB/s write makes the 285MB/s some Ivy Bridge upgrades. and 275MB/sec of last year’s 120GB OCZ Greg Corke
Lenovo ThinkStation E31 SFF
A compact entry-level 3D CAD workstation with excellent build quality
They say the best things come in small packages. And Lenovo obviously thinks so. Its new ThinkStation E31 SFF (Small Form Factor) is a great little machine, perfectly proportioned for cramped design offices, but still kitted out with workstation-class components.
This is encapsulated by the Xeon E3-1230 V2, a quad core Ivy Bridge CPU. At 3.3GHz it’s slightly slower at core tasks than the popular CAD chip, the 3.4GHz Core i5-3570K, but with ThinkStation E31 SFF’s standing of an support for HyperThreading it gives a wel- entry-level 3D workstation. come boost when rendering. Its Xeon cre- Despite its slimline 337 x 369 x 100mm dentials also mean support for chassis, the E31 SFF has Error Correcting Code (ECC) memory, which can be impor- Product spec retained Lenovo’s trademark serviceability. A lever at the tant for CAD users who put a premium on stability. ■ Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 3.3 GHz (Quad Core) (Ivy Bridge) back unlocks the solid case and the hinged side panel
ECC does come at a price so CPU flips open. Everything is pretto keep costs down our test machine was kitted out with ■ 8GB (2 x 4GB) PC312800 1600MHz DDR3 memory ty cramped inside but upgrades are straightforward. 8GB of more prosaic non-ECC ■ Nvidia Quadro 600 The hard drive caddy, mountmemory. This is a good amount (1GB DDR3) graphics ed on plastic clips, comes out for entry level CAD and BIM, ■ 1TB 7,200RPM with ease, giving unobstructthough there are still two slots 6Gb/s SATA drive ed access to the memory. free for future upgrades. ■ Lenovo motherboard The ThinkStation E31 SFF
Storage is nothing fancy — a (Intel C216 chipset) is not for everyone, which is 1TB 7,200RPM 6Gb/s SATA. ■ Microsoft Windows why Lenovo also produces a To boost capacity, 2TB and 3TB 7 Professional 64-bit larger ThinkStation E31 drives are available and there ■ 3 year on-site Tower, which offers more is also space for a second drive. warranty expandability and higher-end Those looking for more perfor- £750 graphics options. But for mance can opt for SSDs or 10K lenovo.co.uk those in the market for a comSATAs. pact entry-level workstation
One area where there is no for CAD or BIM with excelflexibility is with graphics. The low-pro- lent build quality the E31 SFF is one of the file Nvidia Quadro 600 is the only real best we have seen. option for CAD confirming the Greg Corke
Workstation Specialists WS1850 Nvidia Maximus 3D workstation
A specialist GPU-accelerated workstation for simulation or Product spec Maximus drivers, the user has pretty good control over where rendering workflows ■ Intel Xeon E5 2670 the workstation’s processing 2.60GHz (eight core) resources are deployed. If ever there was ever a need to ■ 32GB (8x4GB) PC3- Firing up our CAD software match hardware to software, 1600MHz quad channel DDR3 we made some tweaks to a this is it. The WS1850 Nvidia memory model and sent it off to render Maximus certified 3D graphics ■ Nvidia Quadro in Bunkspeed Shot using the workstation has a very well 4000 (2GB) graphics Tesla C2075 GPU. As the prodefined role. It is designed spe- ■ Nvidia Tesla C2075 gressive ray trace renderer cifically to reduce compute (6GB) compute refined the image, we were still times in Computer Aided ■ 120GB Intel 520 Series SSD + 2TB able to carry on designing in Engineering (CAE) software 7,200RPM SATA 3 our CAD tool quite happily. and ray trace renderers using hard drive The software was responsive powerful GPUs (Graphics ■ Intel X79 Express with no impact whatsoever on Processing Units). motherboard 3D performance. This is commonly referred to as GPU compute and when a workstation features Nvidia GPUs, it ■ Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit ■ 36 months full parts and labour To take things up a notch, we used the Xeon CPU for mental ray rendering in 3ds Max and is called Nvidia Maximus. system warranty the Tesla GPU for ray tracing
To give a bit more detail, £4,995 in Bunkspeed Shot. With some Nvidia Maximus workstations workstation tinkering to CPU resources we feature multiple GPUs: one specialists.com probably could have left some dedicated to graphics and one free for 3D modelling in our or more dedicated to compute. CAD application. In our WS1850 workstation there is a Beyond processors, the WS1850 is amply Quadro 4000 GPU for 3D graphics and supported with 32GB PC3-1600MHz Quad Tesla C2075 GPU for simulation or render- Channel DDR3 memoing. ry. This is particularly
In terms of workflow, the big play for important when hanNvidia Maximus is that it allows engineers to dling simulation work‘design and simulate’ or ‘design and render’ flows as jobs tend to at the same time, with little to no slow down. start and end on the
Then, when deadlines are looming, or CPU, with certain eleperhaps during lunch time or overnight, ments getting served up every available GPU and CPU resource can to the GPU as and when be thrown at a problem to speed things up. applicable.
In the WS1850, there is quite a bit of dif- The WS1850 does not ference between the Quadro 4000 and hesitate when getting Tesla C2075, so do not expect too big a data to and from the speed up when using both GPUs. To CPU. The 120GB Intel express this in numbers: the Quadro 4000 520 Series Solid State boasts 243 Gigaflops double precision per- Drive (SSD) boasts the formance while the Tesla C2075 delivers excellent read and more than twice that with 515 Gigaflops. write rates of 550MB/s
The WS1850 is not all about GPUs. It also and 500MB/s respecfeatures a powerful Intel Xeon E5 2670 CPU tively. A high perforwhose eight CPU cores also happen to be mance 7,200RPM 2TB pretty good at number crunching. Between SATA 3 hard drive is the simulation / rendering software, the provided for longer Windows operating system and the Nvidia term storage.
As mentioned at the outset, the WS1850 Maximus workstation needs to be matched to applications. There has to be a simulation / rendering element to your workflow, and while this is limited to certain software, the list of compatible Nvidia Maximus applications is growing.
For simulation, the main ones include Ansys Mechanical, MSC Nastran, MSC Marc, and DS Simulia Abaqus. For design visualisation, there is Bunkspeed Shot, 3ds Max Design, DS Catia Live rendering and RTT DeltaGen.
GPU compute can be quite a hard technology to get your head round and buying into the technology is a serious investment. A good way of thinking about it is to compare the WS1850 Maximus to a more traditional dual processor workstation.
All design and engineering workflows need a single CPU. The second CPU is really used to better support multi tasking or accelerating multi-threaded processes like rendering or simulation. With Maximus that second processor just happens to be a GPU. In certain applications, particularly in simulation, it has been demonstrated to get the job done much quicker. As a closing comment, we feel it is important to mention that the Quadro 4000 and Tesla C2075 are first generation Maximus products, based on Nvidia’s ‘Fermi’ architecture. Nvidia has just announced ‘second generation’ Maximus, based on its new ‘Kepler’ architecture, and machines with the new Quadro K5000 and Tesla K20 should appear in early 2013. We would expect there to be quite a leap in performance, if you can wait that long.
Greg Corke
Ultimate Render Speed...
Powered by Intel® E5-2600 Series CPUs, our latest WS2850 delivers 16x CPU Processing Cores (32x Threads) to your desktop.
Dramatically reduce render times for large, complex data sets, adding Performance when you need it with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0. Reduce I/O Latency and Increase Bandwidth with Intel® Integrated I/O and truly revolutionise your workflow.
Ref: X3DAEC02
+44 (0) 800 180 4801 sales@wksmail.com www.workstationspecialists.com
Raster image processing
3D texturing
Scalable terrain modeling*
Data courtesy of HNTB Data courtesy of HNTB
Advanced point cloud processing*
Bentley Descartes information modeling software extends MicroStation and other Bentley design software products. Bentley Descartes delivers visualization, raster/vector hybrid workflows, and the processing of fundamental data types used in infrastructure projects. With the newest release, these data types now include everything from rasters to scalable terrain models, point clouds and more.
The benefits to your organization are: • Increased return on investment on point cloud data and other large datasets • Improved output quality • Increased flexibility to bring raster images into infrastructure project workflows, providing visualization and context • Enhanced project team productivity
Learn how Bentley Descartes V8i (SELECTseries 3) is advancing information modeling for intelligent infrastructure and helping users meet today’s demanding project challenges at www.bentley.com/DescartesAIM.
*New with Bentley Descartes V8i (SELECTseries 3)
