Dell Precision Workstation Refresh 2015
October 2015 – As an end of the year refresh and to line up with the Adobe MAX event, Dell rolled out a new line of mobile workstations and an addition to the desktop lineup. The major shift on the mobile workstations is the inclusion of the Intel Sky Lake H processors, support for Thunderbolt and use of the new Dell Precision Optimizer 3.0. The shift to the Sky Lake H processors, in combination with the mobile platforms support for discrete graphics (AMD and Nvidia) brings an increase in performance at a lower energy operating point. This combination allows for the support for increased resolution and performance displays – including a 60fps deep color display 4K touch panel that can be color calibrated.
Dell Precision Mobile Workstations 2015
A major redesign took place on the 5000 series workstations. The new Precision 5510 is under 4lbs, supports up to 32GB of DDR4 memory, Thunderbolt 3 and Nvidia professional graphics. The redesign brings the carbon fiber interior of the unit a 3 sided infinity display with ultra-narrow bezel. This combination gives the unit the smallest 15” form factor on the market with an 11mm (front) to 16mm (back) wedge shaped thickness. The largest 17” workstations (the 7000 series – 7510 & 7710) are now sporting full carbon fiber for strength and weight reduction, both inside and out. The 7000 series can now support up to 64GB of DDR4, Thunderbolt 3, either AMD or Nvidia professional graphics, and support for up to 3 internal storage solutions. All of these products can support both Core i processors or Xeon processors. With the Xeon based systems, the platforms use ECC memory. The 15” Precision 5510 with the Xeon processors and 4K touch-enabled display is the recommended platform for those in the M&E space doing professional content creation and live content streaming.
All of these units are field serviceable and upgradeable. They feature business class 24 hr service. The 7000 series now features the 8th generation heat pipes and dual fan configuration which allows them to support up to 100W of discrete GPU in the 17” form factor. These units have a full keyboard and a side 10 keypad in addition to the Microsoft touchpad. The mobile workstations can support Win 7, Win 10, Red hat, Ubuntu and other Linux systems.
On the fixed footprint side there are new entry level workstations the Precision 3620 and the 3410. These have a smaller footprint that prior workstations in the mid-tower and desktop SFF class, but with the new series of Sky Lake Core i3, i5, i7 and Xeon E3-1200 v5 processors can support up to 150W of GPU in the mid-tower and 50W of GPU in the SFF case. Like the other workstations, all components are field serviceable without tools as is the single power supply. The two new workstations can each support 64GB of DDR4 memory. All of the fixed workstations have a 1GB LAN interface and support 10GB LAN cards on the available PCIe interface.
Dell Precision Optimizer V3.0 2015
One key aspect of the Dell Precision lineup is the ISV (Independent Software Vendor) certification process and partnerships. This program allows a buyer of the workstations to know that the configuration and architecture of the machine will work with the software, as planned with predictable throughput, reliability and performance. To help optimize this performance the version 3.0 of the Dell Precision Optimizer now provides automated performance tuning and Analytics. These analytics relate to the tuning of application profiles, creation of new profiles as well as reliability and usage reports to assess, plan, and address resource needs.
