For this ‘Sandy Bridge’ desktop, Derby-based Workstation Specialists has placed a big emphasis on 3D graphics with Nvidia’s mid-range Quadro 2000 card taking pride of place at the heart of the machine.
Based on Nvidia’s Fermi architecture this new 1GB board looks to be an excellent choice for mid-range CAD.
While the WS1410 rates highly in our SolidWorks 2010 3D graphics test, it doesn’t make as much of an impression in our CPUbased benchmarks. It is the only machine this month not to be overclocked and this becomes evident when directly compared to the InterPro PW-Ci7 and Scan 3XS P67.
The WS1410 relies on the 3.8GHz Turbo Boosted clock speed of the Core i7-2600 processor and while the benchmark scores are still excellent for an entry-level machine was a little behind the competition in our SolidWorks CAD and PowerMill CAM tests.
Elsewhere in the machine, a standard 500GB 7,200RPM hard drive should satisfy most users’ storage requirements. 8GB of RAM provides plenty of memory for working with large CAD models and by using 4GB modules there are still two slots free for future expansion.
It’s very hard to fault the WS1410, and it certainly delivers when it comes to 3D graphics, but it’s easy to get distracted by the current availability of overclocked workstations with similar price tags.
Greg Corke
Meanwhile to find out more on Sandy Bridge here’s our review
Intel ‘Sandy Bridge‘
And here’s some links to some other Sandy Bridge workstations
InterPro Workstations IPW-Ci5
Scan 3XS P67 Workstation
To view the benchmark scores please click here
For details of all of our application-specific CAD/CAM/CAE benchmarks click here
Specifications
» Intel Core i7 2600(3.40GHz) Quad Core CPU
» 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR-3 1333MHz memory
» Workstation Specialists mainboard
» PNY Nvidia Quadro 2000 (1GB) graphics card
» 500GB SATA-2 hard drive
» Windows Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
» 36 months full parts and labour system warranty
Benchmarks
Graphics (frames per second – bigger is better)
» CAD (SolidWorks 2010) – 31
» CPU (secs – smaller is better)
» CAD (SolidWorks 2010) – 286
» CAM (Delcam PowerMill 2010) – 1) 176 2) 274 3) 385
» CAE (SolidWorks Simulation 2010) – 100
» Rendering (3ds Max Design 2011) – 261.
Intel Core i7 2600 (3.40GHz) Quad Core CPU
8GB (2x 4GB) DDR-3
PNY Nvidia Quadro
Workstation Specialists
500GB SATA-2
36 months full parts and labour system warranty
