Having made its name in highperformance gaming PCs, DEVELOP3D debutant Wired2Fire has now turned its hand to CAD workstations.
The Wired2-3D Ultima is its latest single processor workstation, based on the ubiquitous quad core Intel Core i7 2600K.
However, while the majority of workstation manufacturers overclock this chip to 4.5GHz, Wired2Fire has pushed things up a notch, guaranteeing 4.7GHz on all machines it ships. All the thermals are managed with air-cooling, a Thermaltake FRIO CPU Cooler to be precise, and a three year collect and return warranty (full parts and labour) is included to give customers peace of mind.
Elsewhere, the Ultima has many other characteristics of a performance CAD workstation. It has been kitted out with 16GB DDR3 memory to handle sizeable 3D datasets. And for graphics, the popular Nvidia Quadro 2000 showed itself to be the solid mainstream CAD performer that we know it to be, with a score of 43 in our SolidWorks benchmark.
One area where the Wired2-3D Ultima doesn’t conform to type is in storage. It makes use of Intel’s new Smart Response Technology (SRT), a cost saving feature of the Intel Z68 chipset, which allows a solid-state drive (SSD) to function as cache for a traditional mechanical drive.
It means commonly used applications and datasets will load faster, even after reboot. We didn’t test this system scientifically, but applications did feel responsive and OS boot time was quick. There’s an interesting article on anandtech.com (tinyurl.com/SSDD3D) that explains this in more depth.
In summary, the Wired2-3D Ultima looks to be a capable performance CAD workstation that boasts the fastest overclocked Intel Core i7 2600K processor we’ve ever seen.
To view comparative scores from other workstations please click here
For details of all our specific CAD/CAM/CAE benchmarks click here
Specifications
– Intel Core i7-2600K CPU (3.4GHz clocked to 4.7GHz) (Quad Core)
– 16GB (4 x 4GB)Corsair DDR3 memory
– Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z (Intel Z68)motherboard
– 20GB Intel 311 Disk Caching SSD + 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 SATA III drive
– Nvidia Quadro 2000 (1GB) graphics card » Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
– 3 year collect and return warranty (full parts and labour)
Benchmarks
(secs – smaller is better)
– CAD (SolidWorks 2010) – 187
– CAM (Delcam PowerMill 2010) – 1) 131 2) 205 3) 286
– CAE (SolidWorks 2010 Simulation) – 79
– Rendering (3ds Max Design 2011) – 196
– Graphics benchmarks (frames per sec – bigger is better)
– CAD (SolidWorks 2010) – 43
Intel Core i7-2600K CPU (3.4GHz clocked to 4.7GHz) (Quad Core)
16GB (4 x 4GB)Corsair DDR3 memory
Nvidia Quadro 2000 (1GB) graphics card
Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z (Intel Z68) motherboard
20GB Intel 311 Disk Caching SSD + 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 SATA III drive
3 year collect and return warranty (full parts and labour)
187
131
205
286
79
196
43
