The not too long ago launched Thelio Astra from American pc producer System76 is being touted as “the quickest Arm desktop pc on this planet” – or no less than that is what developer and influencer Jeff Geerling declared after placing the system by means of its paces.
In Geerling’s testing utilizing the Cinebench 2024 benchmark, the top-tier variant of the Thelio Astra, powered by the 128-core Ampere Altra Max M128-30, achieved an eye-watering 5,003 factors in multi-threaded mode. This rating edges out the licensed world document of 4,723 factors set by AMD’s EPYC 7713 chip with an analogous variety of cores.
Given these figures, it is no shock that the Astra additionally excelled in Blender rendering workloads. Geerling particularly highlighted the system’s spectacular 1.7 TFLOPS of double-precision compute energy.
With regards to the general package deal, that is far out of your common pre-built desktop. The entry-level $3,299 mannequin already packs a critical punch with 64 cores, 64GB of RAM, and an RTX A400 GPU. Nonetheless, the highest configuration Geerling examined – priced simply shy of $7,000 – pulls out all of the stops with 128 cores, 512GB of octa-channel RAM, 40TB of storage capability, and an RTX 6000 Ada GPU.
All this {hardware} is housed in a glossy, quiet tower, which once more is a shock contemplating the close to server-grade specs. Patriots can even be happy to know that it is an American-made system, coming straight out of System76’s Denver facility.
Geerling did spotlight some downsides with the system although. Past its ultra-premium pricing, single-threaded efficiency is underwhelming and barely inches previous AMD’s 2017 Threadripper 1950X in the identical Cinebench check. That is unhappy contemplating the prodigious multi-core muscle.
There are additionally platform limitations to contemplate. The system is restricted to PCIe 4.0 and DDR4 RAM, which can really feel outdated to some. Geerling was additionally lower than thrilled with the shortage of entrance I/O ports and famous some rattling from the PCIe brackets. And for those who’re enthusiastic about gaming on this machine whereas working Home windows, suppose once more – Nvidia has but to launch Arm-compatible drivers.
However then once more, the Thelio Astra is not designed to be a gaming rig or a general-purpose desktop PC alternative. System76 is squarely focusing on builders, with a specific emphasis on the automotive software program business, the place it shines as a platform for “speedy dev prototyping.”
“System76 and Ampere trip collectively to make Thelio Astra the driving power behind AV improvement,” the corporate notes on its web site. In the event you’re in that area of interest and have money to burn, this could possibly be the most recent must-have Arm toy for you.
