DigitalStorm Slade Pro Workstation PC Review
by Dustin Sklavos on April 23, 2014 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- desktops
- Xeon
- Quadro
- DigitalStorm
- Workstation
- Octalcore
The DigitalStorm Slade Pro possesses an extremely powerful processor, a healthy amount of memory, and a solid workstation graphics card. In standard testing it's not going to really go the distance, but when we get to workstation tests it should prove its worth.
Note that some of these benchmarks have been updated and as a result, no comparison results are available.
| BENCHMARK | SCORE |
| PCMark 8 (Home, OpenCL) | 4879 |
| PCMark 8 (Creative, OpenCL) | 4094 |
| PCMark 8 (Work, OpenCL) | 4591 |
| Cinebench R15 (OpenGL) | 102.85 |
| Cinebench R15 (Single-Threaded) | 123 |
| Cinebench R15 (Multi-Threaded) | 1218 |
| x264 5.0 (Pass 1) | 95.53 |
| x264 5.0 (Pass 2) | 25.43 |
PCMark 8 is predominately a consumer performance metric and not really designed for systems like this one; AVADirect's recent Silent PC review consistently outscored the Slade Pro, owing largely to the overclocked Intel Core i7-4770K and beefy NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780.
Note that there are no 3DMark results; 3DMark results have virtually no bearing on the performance of a system like this. A cut down GK106 isn't a compelling GPU for gaming (especially not with Maxwell running around), but the Quadro K4000 isn't a gaming card either.
DigitalStorm's system is faster across the board than every system we've tested up to this point in PCMark 7, owing to both its high IPC and high core clocks; the Sandy Bridge-EP generation E5-2687W is ~300MHz slower than the newer E5-2687W v2.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
52 Comments
View All Comments
Antronman - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
No PCIe storage?What kind of WS is this?
otherwise - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
The way this machine is speced is utterly baffling. Xeon without ECC? Really? It's not like they're saving that much money going with the Sabertooth over a solid Supermicro board.FlyBri - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
Yea, Dell's warranty is longer and more capable "on paper", but that doesn't necessarily translate into good real world support. I had a HORRENDOUS time dealing with Dell for months when they refused to service a system still under warranty (and the issue was covered under the warranty terms). Worst experience with any company I have ever dealt with. So, for me, even if the the competition is much more expensive, I'd rather take my chances with them over Dell any day.otherwise - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
Was it a workstation? Your support gets routed in different ways depending on exactly what product you're dealing with. Their consumer level support is horrible but I've had great luck dealing with their server support guys who are located in Canada.SodaAnt - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
I've actually had a pretty good experience with Dell with their mobile workstation line and support. I had a few issues, from a bum GPU to a display issue, and each time they sent a tech out with the parts the next day and fixed every single issue.irusun - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
A couple points...Yes, the pricing is kind of crazy, similar to Boxx, but for certain markets, a couple thousand extra dollars is a drop in the bucket - think big content creation market where budgets are often in the millions.
Not specific to DigitalStorm (or its pricing), but on the opposite end...
Anandtech is really behind the curve on "workstation" hardware thinking... Quadros and ECC memory are often completely useless and a waste of money. I use high-end CAD software (a lot of which uses DX) and often works better/faster on a top end i7 and a GTX then a Xeon and Quadro, while saving a lot of money. The tech industry has a motive and agenda to keep an artificial separation between the professional market and the consumer market, and for the most part it doesn't exist in reality. There's a very limited application space where something like a Quadro makes a difference (mostly high-end OpenGL performance), and even less for Xeons and even less for ECC memory (which in practice is only necessary for uninterrupted 24x7 applications). And yes, I know all about "certified" drivers, etc., which again, in practice generally means squat.
There are obviously usage scenarios where such hardware is needed, but tech sites (and their followers) need to stop feeding into the "professional workstation = Xeon/Quadro/ECC" conventional wisdom. I've seen countless dollars wasted on such hardware where inexpensive "consumer" hardware will run circles around it.
ggathagan - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
Speed, while obviously very important, isn't the sole factor when looking at workstations.The "Xeon/Quadro/ECC wisdom" that you scoff at is tied to stability and 24x7 stability is the bread and butter for the workstation market.
What good is a faster workstation if it's not reliable?
Downtime translates into lost revenue, and in arenas where workstations are used, it's rare that a company or contractor are given a 2nd chance if they miss a deadline.
Antronman - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
More speed on a workstation can often result in more stability under higher loads.ECC is useful, but not when you're getting buttloads of data. It's good for debugging, and also testing programs. But as far as the actual development portion goes, speed is the first factor you look at. But ECC is still incredibly handy, and for the sake of redundancy, a standard feature.
Death666Angel - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
On one hand you say pricing nearly doesn't matter here, on the other you lament the pricing of professional class hardware. Derp.Quadros are very specialized and not needed for every professional, yes. But ECC is a must have with anything that is running for more than a day, because if you let something calculate the whole night, come back the next day and see a calculation error because of your RAM you just spent half a day of your time and the companies money for nothing. That time wasted probably would have paid for the ECC RAM. If you don't need the stability of these components, then you don't need a workstation. You need to understand that doing work on a PC does not transform that PC into a workstation. Otherwise my mothers Netbook is a workstation.
wetwareinterface - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
another thing to consider against the mentality that "pro's don't really need..."these systems are usually bought for an operation by a reseller, the less time spent by said reseller supporting said installation the more moeny in the reseller's pocket.
and again if you are rendering out something on a workstation even if you don't need a quadro ecc is a life saver. not to mention good luck getting more ram in a system than 64 GB without ecc or a workstation class motherboard.