What makes this workstation faster?

One improvement in the Precision 5760 stands out. The new model ships with an NVIDIA RTX A3000. What lies behind the performance increase is simple.

The transition from RTX 3000 to RTX A3000 includes an architecture transition from Turing to Ampere. NVIDIA describes the Ampere architecture as 1.7 times faster on traditional raster graphics and up to 2 times faster in ray tracing.  

Additionally, the RTX A3000 GPU is packed with 17.4 billion transistors – 61% more silicon than the RTX 3000. It’s 4096 cores more than double the number in the RTX 3000. The base clock speed and the boost clock speed on the RTX A3000 are also higher than on the RTX 3000.

The 17-inch Precision 5760 has the size of a 15-inch mobile workstation and the performance of a desktop replacement from just a few years ago.

Thanks to a reduction in the manufacturing process, The RTX A3000 is slightly smaller than the RTX 3000 despite the increase in transistors.

The 11th generation Core i9 processor brings faster memory speeds and PCIe 4.0 with it. The workstation’s memory is now clocked at 3200 MHz in lieu of 2933 MHz. Memory capacity in the Precision 5760 remains at 64 GB.

SSD storage makes a large jump in capacity. It doubles from 4 TB to 8 TB of NVMe SSD storage in the new 5760. The NVMe SSD drives from 512 GB up to 4 TB are available as PCIe Gen 3 or PCIe Gen 4 products. This is a potential game-changer for mobile users with large datasets.

Released in the summer of 2021, this compact, light Precision 5760 delivers performance of a desktop replacement workstation from a few years ago. The performance and capacity are on par with, or better than the Precision 7730 with a Quadro P5200 and 8 TB of SSD storage released in the summer of 2018.  

Performance results

Performance testing includes Viewperf 2020 v2.0, Octane Bench 2020, and DaVinci Resolve. Viewperf isolates workstation graphics performance. Octane Bench measures CUDA performance. In DaVinci Resolve, testing focuses on Resolve 17’s Neural Engine which exercises the AI capabilities of the workstation.

This Viewperf comparison against a similarly configured mobile workstation.

In our Viewperf 2020 version 2.0 testing, the GPU, CPU and memory hardware was identical. The 15-inch workstation was running Windows 10 Pro and the Precision 5760 was running Windows 11 Pro. The workstations were running different driver versions.

Generally, the results were reasonable given the differnt operating systems and driver versions. The 5760 was faster in 4 tests and the 15-inch mobile workstation was faster in 4 tests.  

This Octane Bench tests the Precision 5760 against the Precision 5750.

In Octane Bench, which tests CUDA performance, we tested the Precision 5760 with the previous generation, the Precision 5750. The 5760 uses the NVIDIA RTX A3000 and the 5750 uses the NVIDIA RTX 3000.

The individual test results are shown in the graph. The Precision 5760 had a total score of 243.26 versus 170.17 for the Precision 5750. The new NVIDIA RTX A3000 performs 25% to 50% better than the RTX 3000. The overall score was 43% faster for the Precision 5760.

As in the Viewperf tests, the Precision 5760 was running Windows 11 Pro and the Precision 5750 was running Windows 10 Pro. 

Davinci Resolve 17’s Neural Engine enables many AI-powered special effects.

DaVinci Resolve 17 is used for video editing and special effects. The program has a reputation for leveraging GPU performance. A well configured Resolve workstation has a powerful GPU with plenty of graphics memory.

The Precision 5760 is lightning fast on rendering Resolve video clips. To stress the workstation, I used several sample files that implement special effects using the Neural Engine in Resolve.

Resolve has two functions that are very useful for slowing down a video clip, Optical Flow and SpeedWarp. Optical Flow automatically generates intermediate frames when a clip is slowed down. It keeps the video fluid, however, it can produce undesired artifacts. SpeedWarp uses DaVinci’s Neural Engine to clean up these artifacts.

Rendering Optical Flow is very fast. SpeedWarp, on the other hand, is a very time-consuming function, but the results look very good. In our first test, you see that rendering a 10 second clip that is slowed down with Optical Flow and SpeedWarp renders in 40 seconds or 400% of real-time playback.

Here are 2 images of the same video frame. The first is the result of Optical Flow. The second is the result of Optical Flow and SpeedWarp. 

Optical Flow interpolates frames, but can produce unwanted visual artifacts

SpeedWarp uses the Neural Engine for image correction

In the image on the left (right-click to view in a new tab), you see rendering artifacts at the end of the flag and in the field of stars. In the image on the right, after applying SpeedWarp, the artifacts at the end of the flag are gone and the field of stars looks perfect.

This clip is rendered at FHD. Using SpeedWarp at a 4K resolution increases the complexity of the image correction and rendering times increase.

The next two tests render special effects applied to a wedding video. The final two tests use the Neural Engine to super sample the video clips. In the first, a 4K clip is zoomed 2x and super scaling is applied to return the clip to a clear 4K image. In the second clip, a FHD clip is scaled to 4K using Resolve’s SuperScale function.  

An original frame from the Bride FaceRefine Selective Color test

The final clip uses the Neural Engine for Face Refinement an tracking combine with several other effects

Performance analyse

The Precision 5760 with its RTX A3000 and Core i9-11950H blasts through 4K video rendering and handles advanced AI-based rendering effects. In large part this is thanks to the power of the Ampere-based GPU and its Tensor cores used in artificial intelligence.

For 4K rendering, the RTX A3000’s 6 GB of graphics memory is an advantage over GPUs with less memory. The 6 GB of GPU memory is recommended for GPU-centric applications. 

A Final Perspective

The Precision 5760 workstation provides 17-inch power in a size that more closely resembles a 15-inch form-factor. Not only is the Precision 5760 ultra-compact for a 17-inch workstation, but it’s also small for a 15-inch workstation!

Even with the compact design, the fast technology and high-end RAM and SSD capacity deliver a mobile workstation that is as good as or better than a high-end 17-inch desktop replacement from just a few of years ago.