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Haswell processors aside, it's the video controller that really sets the performance bar in the workstation world with plenty of options here to help make the T5810 fly.
Customers with an existing adapter can save money by leaving this out altogether, otherwise it's a choice between AMD FirePro and Nvidia Quadro GPUs, with a number of models on offer to suit both budget and application requirements.
There's room and power for a pair of graphics cards if needed, but the review system had just one in the form of an AMD FirePro W5100. This 3D capable card takes up a single PCIe slot and has four DisplayPort connectors offering support for monitors with up to 4K resolution.
Capable of a great deal more than your average desktop video controller the W5100 sports 768 processing cores and 4GB of video RAM which sounds impressive but effectively makes it a mid-range 3D adapter in workstation terms. A positioning confirmed when we ran CineBench R15 on the new Dell workstation, the T5810 returning a score of 92.33fps in the OpenGL test.
The separate processor (rendering) score was 713 using this benchmark and both are very respectable results for a single-processor system, the FirePro equipping the T5810 well to handle most CAD/CAM and visual content editing applications.
In addition there's scope for further improvement by opting for a higher spec GPU, although this will add a significant amount to the price tag. Swapping to a high-end Nvidia Quadro K6000, for example, will push the price up by almost £3,000 (around $4,690, AU$5,640).
Storage and more
Storage is, again, down to the customer to specify. The review system had just a single 1TB SATA disk cabled to the on-board controller, but there's plenty of room to add more and RAID is an option. You can also opt for faster SSD drives both for use as conventional storage and boot purposes, or to act as a performance-boosting cache using Intel CAS-W technology, now available as an option on all Precision workstations.
A slimline DVD writer was also fitted on the workstation we looked at and with 10 USB ports (four USB 3.0) plus two on the motherboard there's very little else you can't plug in. An integrated Gigabit network interface also comes as standard and there are five PCIe expansion slots.
Windows 7 Professional was pre-loaded on the test system which retails at £1,941 ex VAT (around $3,035, AU$3,650) not including the monitor which was used for testing. However, at the time of our review Dell was offering a 30% discount, bringing the price down to £1,359 (around $2,125, AU$2,560) ex VAT until May 2015.
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