3DArtist recently got to try the Boston Venom 2302-7T, a workstation with a FirePro W9100 and a fast Core i7 processor, here's what they had to say.....
The 2302-7T is a mid-range desktop workstation that's coupled with a high-end graphics card, AMD's monstrous FirePro W9100. It uses a liquid-cooled desktop quad-core processor, Intel's Core i7 4970K, which runs at 4GHz as standard, but ramps up to 4.4GHz under load. Characterised by six DisplayPort video outputs, the FirePro W9100 is a powerful graphics card, packing 16GB of onboard GDDR5 memory, a 512-bit memory bus and 2,816 shaders. This accounts for a large proportion of the cost of the test unit sent to us, but opting for a less high-end card, such as a Quadro K2000, could shave £1,200 off the price. With an entry-level FirePro V4900 3D card, the 2302-7T costs just £1,599 excluding VAT, but including a three-year warranty. There are benefits and disadvantages of using desktop-grade chips for 3D work. While they may have less cores, and they can't use ECC memory, they generally run at faster speeds than Xeons, and are considerably less expensive. The storage configuration consists of two 2TB hard disks in RAID, coupled with a 256GB SanDisk X210 SSD. The SuperMicro CZ97-OCE motherboard comes with 16GB of memory fitted, which can be upgraded to a maximum of 32GB. Boston has used a SuperMicro chassis, with two front-mounted USB 3 and two USB 2 ports. The case is far more portable than a typical workstation case, but there's still plenty of room for expansion, and the internal design is particularly tidy, with very few visible cables. In graphics tests, the W9100 really pushed the 2302-7T ahead of competitors in benchmarks. The score of 170fps in Cinebench is a new record, and it chewed through the detailed Luxmark scene with the highest single-GPU score we've seen at 1,390 points. Impressively, SPECViewPerf scores were very close to those managed by the pricier Nvidia Quadro K6000 in Scan's 3XS GW-HTX35 test. While the desktop chip can't beat the CPU scores of dual-Xeon workstations, the 4GHz clock speed helps it to put in a good vshowing. Four minutes for the Underwater 3ds Max benchmark is still fairly quick, with 14 minutes for the longer 1080p test. The impressive Cinebench score of 834 races ahead of Intel's previous generation of Core i7 processors. If you know your workload is going to depend heavily on graphics card performance, then the Boston Venom 2302-7T would be a better choice than a dual-Xeon system, but as it stands, it's a great workstation in its own right.
Their concluson? A workstation that provides good all-round results, with amazing graphics abilities, scoring a fantastic 8/10!