While we recommend a replacement cycle of 3 to 5 years for workstations, we're not suggesting that the system is done with at that point. Just that CAD and CAE users are typically amongst the most demanding users who will benefit most from an upgrade. After all, we've been talking a lot about sustainability. The great thing is these systems have a level of performance and durability that means that they will often perform well for many years for another user in the business with less performance demands. Or alternatively, you can take advantage of Dell's asset recovery services where devices from any manufacturer can be returned, where they will be securely wiped before then, ideally being repurposed, or if of no value, the device will be recycled. The system we're comparing against is a high end three year old precision. 7750 with an i7 six core CPU, a quadro RTX 3000 6 Gigabyte graphics and 32 gigabytes of RAM We tested in SolidWorks, but the performance requirements for 2D and 3D CAD programs such as draft site and CATIA have similar requirements. No matter the CAD program. The majority of CAD operations need to be built in order one feature or step at a time, and hence most of the time you will see only one to two cores being utilized meaning the high speed CPU's give the best performance. We included a range of other workloads such as SolidWorks, Simulation, FEA and CFD using SolidWorks flow simulation, which contracts even more cores, and we even included graphics card workloads and GPU based rendering using SolidWorks Visualize. We ran each test a minimum of three times to take an average Starting with the Precision 3000 series, which we typically recommend mainly for core CAD use. Let's see how they stack up. we tested our recommended specifications of our precision. 3580 and 3581 both with an i7 CPU 14 cores albeit with the 3581 running at higher power limits and speeds. The other difference being the 3580 has a slightly less powerful RTX A500 4 gigabyte graphics card compared with the RTX A1000 6 gigabyte GPU. We didn't benchmark the precision 3480 with it having similar components to the 3580 We expect performance for that model to be close to its larger sibling We'll start by looking at the performance for core CAD tasks opening a large assembly, the Nemo submarine dataset on the three year old high end machine takes just over 2 minutes. incredibly even on these lower powered systems. It takes just one minute and 35 seconds to open on the 3581, almost a 25% improvement for a supposedly entry level system the 3580 with its slightly lower powered i7 28 watt CPU and A500 graphics is just behind and marginally slower at one minute and 45 seconds. The performance difference was also consistent for other single threaded tasks such as rebuilds for more multithreaded CAE tasks such as simulation and flow simulation. The progress over the last few years is also very clear. For a static simulation to three year old high end precision. 7750 takes nearly 7 minutes to complete our example static simulation study Whereas the precision three, five, eight one takes just 4 minutes for the same simulation and the lower powered precision 3580 takes just over 4 minutes and 30 seconds for a complex flow simulation. The three year old laptop with just six cores takes one hour and 50 minutes to complete the i7 14 core CPU in the precision 3580 takes it down to 65 minutes while the i7 3581 with its higher power limits is able to sustain higher speeds and therefore takes just 54 minutes and 30 seconds over 50% faster than the older high end machine. However, the precision 3000 series is not the fastest option for simulation tasks in the entire precision range. Check out our videos on the Precision 7000 series. If simulation is your core focus to test the graphics power. We run an automated rotation test using the same complex Nemo submarine dataset, at full HD with real view graphics and shaded with edges mode active. The three year olds 7750 and Quadro RTX 3000 6 gigabyte graphics sets a benchmark of 23 frames per second. However, the progress in graphics means that even the 3580 with the Nvidia RTX 500 managed 28 frames per second and the 3581 with the RTX, a1000 managed 34 frames per second. We'd expect to be seeing anything over 30 frames per second and above. SolidWorks Visualize is optimized for Nvidia graphics cards and here the higher end card of the older laptop does still show through the precision 7750 with the high end Quadro RTX 3000 6 gigabyte graphics card takes just 4 minutes and 36 seconds to render a 4K scene with 500 passes the precision 3580 with the RTX A500 graphics takes over double the time at 9 minutes and 30 seconds and the 3581 with the RTX a1000 six gigabyte card taking 6 minutes and 55 seconds. So starting with the bad news, the 3000 series is not our optimal choice for simulation tasks or those reliant on the graphics card power for computations such as SOLIDWORKS Visualize. Even if you were to go up to the higher spec Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada generation graphics option, it pushes the price up to the territory of more capable 5007 thousand series laptops, which have more advanced cooling and power delivery for a similar price. The takeaway is for what is supposed to be Dell's entry level workstations. The precision 3000 series machines now deliver an incredible amount of performance for general CAD work. to find out the right specification for you. You can view a full range of recommended workstations, complete with a simple performance rating out of five on our website.