With 2024 at a close, we wanted to look back at the sales trends we saw for CPUs, GPUs, storage, RAM and operating systems.
![Puget Systems 2024 Hardware Trends](https://www.pugetsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Puget-Systems-2024-Hardware-Trends.png)
With 2024 at a close, we wanted to look back at the sales trends we saw for CPUs, GPUs, storage, RAM and operating systems.
With 2023 at a close, we wanted to look back at the sales trends we saw for CPU, GPU, storage, and OS.
With 2022 at a close, we wanted to look back at the sales trends we saw for CPU, GPU, storage, and OS.
Windows 11 has officially been out for 8 months, and most applications now have official support for the new operating system. When it initially launched, we saw measurable performance issues with Windows 11 in content creation applications, but have those gone away now that the OS has had time to mature?
Using NVLink requires a physical bridge between two identical NVIDIA graphics cards, but with the new generation of Ampere-based GeForce RTX 30 Series and RTX A-series video cards which bridges work with which GPUs?
NVIDIA does not consider dual NVLink – using two pairs of cards, each connected via a NVLink bridge and enabled via SLI – to be a supported configuration with GeForce cards in Windows, but some driver releases do allow it to function. This article will look at how to get that working, if you really must have it, and why we are not offering it on our workstations here at Puget Systems.
When AMD launched the 64-core Threadripper 3990X, some reviewers reported that performance of this 128-thread beast was hindered by running a normal version of Windows 10 Pro – and that instead using Windows 10 Pro for Workstations or Windows 10 Enterprise gave better results. We have investigated that claim using our in-house Pix4D and RealityCapture benchmarks to see if the choice of operating system could impact our customers.
When AMD launched the 64-core Threadripper 3990X, some reviewers reported that performance of this 128-thread beast was hindered by running a normal version of Windows 10 Pro – and that using Windows 10 Pro for Workstations or Windows 10 Enterprise instead gave better results. We have investigated that claim using Cinebench and V-Ray benchmarks to see if the choice of operating system could impact our customers.
When the performance of AMD’s Threadripper processors is brought up, the discussion can often turn toward some of the oddities of this CPU’s architecture and how it interacts with thread scheduling in Windows 10. That is something which AMD has attempted to improve with their Ryzen Master software, and which has been partially addressed by Microsoft as well (via Windows updates). Some folks in the wider AMD enthusiast community have tried to tackle this issue too.
Over the last couple of years, several new vulnerabilities have been found in modern microprocessor architectures. Many of these have been related to speculative execution techniques used across most of Intel’s product line, and a patch was released for Windows 10 last week which was intended to address some of those weaknesses. Unfortunately, it has also reduced performance in some applications – which this article will demonstrate by comparing processing speed in three photogrammetry programs before and after the update.