With AMD's recent launch of their Zen 4 architecture-based Threadripper 7000 series CPUs, the company and its OEM partners have unleashed a new wave of high-end PCs and workstations based on the considerable-core-count processors. Though not a massive market in and of itself, the workstation market is by most respects the pinnacle of the PC market, with systems employing the biggest and fastest hardware available, and often a whole lot of it. As a result, the workstation market is still a very important one to PC OEMs and chip vendors who are looking to move big silicon for big prices – but it's also a fun one for consumers to watch, if only for a glimpse of what all of this PC hardware is capable of in its most powerful configurations.
As Threadripper Pro 7000 workstations are now shipping, we're finally getting our first look at AMD's premiere workstation silicon. Unlike AMD's vanilla Threadripper 7000 processors, which we reviewed last month, for their top-end Pro silicon AMD is letting their OEM partners take the lead in showcasing their latest wares. With virtually all workstation-grade CPUs sold to OEMs, self-built workstations aren't really a thing. At the same time, good workstation hardware it in a class of its own, not just with chips but with regards to the entire package – and all of which AMD's OEM partners are eager to show off. Which for today's review, means we get to do something we don't get to do very often at AnandTech, and take a look at a proper, high-end workstation.
For our first look at the Threadripper Pro 7000 series hardware, today we are taking a look at a fully-fledged workstation from HP's Z6 range, the HP Z6 G5 A. The HP Z6 G5 A system we have in for review today includes the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX with 96C/192T, with 128 GB of DDR5-5200 RDIMM (8 x 32 GB), as well as NVIDIA's RTX A4000 single-slot graphics card designed for AI-accelerated compute and high-performance real-time ray tracing. With such a high-end specification, we're putting the HP Z6 G5 A up against Intel's flagship Xeon W9-3495X (56C/112T) workstation processor and AMD's non-Pro Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series processors.
