Here at Puget Systems, it is our goal to perform realistic testing on the software packages we tailor our workstations toward. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes it is harder… and sometimes a software maker already provides their own benchmark tool. That is the case with Maxon, makers of Cinema 4D, as well as the free benchmark, took Cinebench. To determine whether we should use it, though, we have to ask some questions. Is Cinebench really a good benchmark for Cinema 4D? How do the tests it runs relate to real-world performance?
The thin line between stress testing and hardware abuse
As a part of our testing, we want to cause hardware to fail if it is close to doing so. However, stress testing for an excessive amount of time could potentially shorten the lifespan of the system. Is there a line where hardware testing becomes hardware abuse?
Pix4D Cloud vs Local Processing
Pix4D is a photogrammetry application which can take sets of photographs and turn them into point clouds and 3D meshes, to make digital versions of real-world objects or locations. It supports both local processing on a workstation as well as uploading images to be processed in the cloud – but which is faster, and what advantages does each have?
A quick look at Titan V rendering performance
The latest in the Titan line is here, bringing along with it a very hefty price tag. We just got our first cards in and while we will be doing more in-depth testing in the near future, we wanted to take a look at some preliminary GPU-based rendering results.
NVIDIA Titan V Surprise
NVIDIA’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, dropped a bit of a bombshell at the NIPS conference yesterday: the launch – and immediate availability – of the next graphics card in NVIDIA’s Titan series. It is called the Titan V, with V referring to the new Volta architecture it is based on. So what can we expect from the latest entry in the Titan lineup?
Why Do Hardware Reviewers Get Different Benchmark Results?
Hardware reviews sometimes report wildly different results for the same CPU. What is going on that is causing some reviews to see higher or lower performance than others?
How I Used to Select Components for My Computers, and Why I Was Wrong
For a long time I helped customers here at Puget Systems select the right hardware for their computers, but I didn’t apply a key principle that I used at work to my own builds. Realizing that, I want to share this insight with other PC enthusiasts.
20 Years Ago I Bought a Wallet
I never spent more than twenty bucks on a wallet. Most were made of nylon or faux leather that wore out after a year.
Why are we only using DDR4-2666 RAM with Threadripper?
Plenty of reviews show you can get higher performance by using faster memory, so why are we limiting our workstations to DDR4-2666?
Stop Directly Comparing CPU Specs
Every time a new generation of CPUs is announced, I see a number of people writing about how they think it will be faster (or slower) than current technology because of the advertised specifications. CPU specs alone don’t tell the whole story, though, and comparing core count and clock speed across different brands or generations of processors is extremely misleading. Stop doing it!