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SOLIDWORKS 2017 Intel Core i7 7700K & i5 7600K Performance

Hardware Article Posted on by

With the new Kaby Lake CPUs from Intel, the main question everyone wants to know is how much faster they are compared to the old CPUs. In this article, we will be tackling this question in terms of SOLIDWORKS performance by examining how the new Intel Core i7 7700K and the Intel Core i5 7600K perform compared to the previous generation Intel Core i7 6700K and Intel Core i5 6600K. In addition, we will also look at a number of “High-End” Core i7 CPUs including the i7 6850K, i7 6900K, and i7 6950X.

Z270 vs Z170: What is the Difference?

Hardware Article Posted on by

With the release of the first Kaby Lake CPUs, Intel has also launched the new Z270 chipset. Unlike some previous launches, where Intel releases all the new chipsets and CPUs at the same time, this time only the top chipset and unlocked (K-series) CPUs will be available at launch.

Kabylake vs Skylake for compute on Linux — Linpack on Ubuntu 1610

HPC Post Posted on by

OK, Intel Core-i7 7th gen Kabylake is out. Of course the first thing I want to do is drop a Core i7 7700K in a new Z270 based motherboard, install Linux and run a Linpack benchmark. You know, GFLOP/s and all that. We installed Ubuntu 1610 with a recent release of Intel MKL and fired up a few Linpack job runs. Read on for the not-so dramatic results.

Most Reliable PC Hardware of 2016

Hardware Article Posted on by

At Puget Systems, we track a lot of data but one of the most important things we track is the failure rates of individual components. Reliability is of our primary values, so this data is invaluable for tracking both individual component, product line, and overall brand failure rates. With 2016 coming to a close, we thought we make public a bit of this data to let you know what hardware we found to be the most reliable in 2016.

NVIDIA DIGITS with Caffe – Performance on Pascal multi-GPU

HPC Post Posted on by

NVIDIA’s Pascal GPU’s have twice the computational performance of the last generation. A great use for this compute capability is for training deep neural networks. We have tested NVIDIA DIGITS 4 with Caffe on 1 to 4 Titan X and GTX 1070 cards. Training was for classification of a million image data set from ImageNet. Read on to see how it went.

Adobe Lightroom 2015.8 Storage Performance Analysis

Hardware Article Posted on by

While what CPU or video card you should purchase tends to be at the forefront of any workstation hardware discussion, storage is often just as important. While there is little existing evidence that Lightroom benefits from particularly fast storage drives for your project files, considering how fast modern hardware has become we felt the need to look into it in more detail.

Reducing Distractions

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A few years ago, the owner of Puget Systems told me about a product that had helped him focus on his work. I’d been feeling less productive and more distracted when trying to work, so I decided to install the application he recommended which is called Rescue Time. I installed the free version, and let it do its thing in the background.

My 5 Favorite Products of 2016

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With 2016 coming to end, I thought it would be interesting to look back at some of my favorite products of the last year.

I prefer products that seamlessly blend into my life. That means they shouldn’t require a lot of updates or ask me to change my behavior very much in order to enjoy them.

With that in mind, here are five of my favorite products of 2016: