Dell Precision workstation with AMD Radeon PRO graphics improves throughput and turnaround time on GPU-intensive rendering and special effects processing

Overview

Theory Studios, an Orlando-based, high-end animation company, employs a global team of graphics professionals to deliver high-quality visuals to clients around the world.

Much of the company’s success can be attributed to its incredibly tight production pipeline – assets go from the early concept stage to content creation, animation, compositing, and all the way through final rendering and post-production effects.

But with the company’s many successful projects came a significant increase in workload. This, in turn, led to an immediate need to improve throughput and turnaround time on GPU-intensive rendering and special effects processing. 

Identifying the right solution

At Theory Studios, there is a constant flow of files moving from stage to stage within the production pipeline – specific individuals handle specific tasks, and use their PCs, as well as server-based assets (either in the cloud or on-premises) to handle the enormous processing loads associated with each project. 

It’s here we arrive at the crux of the company’s efficiency issue – a graphics workstation is not only used for content creation by artists, but also put to work as a rendering machine to process raw assets. Some of these tasks might take hours or even days to complete. 

Reducing this unattended render-time can be a major solution to improving the company’s overall efficiency. 

Processing times were reduced by 50%

In searching for a solution, Theory Studios was introduced to the Dell Precision workstation, which immediately helped the company improve its turnaround time. This is because in building the workstation, Dell Technologies teamed up with AMD to provide Theory Studios with a Dell Precision 3630 Tower that came equipped with an AMD Radeon™ PRO W5500 8GB GPU, 32 GB DDR4 2666 MHz RAM, and a 512 GB NVMe® Class 40 SSD. This unique configuration was specially built to take on demanding graphics tasks and turn them out quickly and reliably. 

For example, while working with a remote colleague on deliverables for a major theme park in East Asia, the company used the Dell / AMD workstation to run After Effects file export jobs that which other colleagues were running on a machine just one generation older. The results were a 50% improvement in export time. 

“All of a sudden, a six-hour file export on that other PC was reduced to a three-hour export on the Dell Precision 3630.” 

- David Andrade, Founder, Theory Studios

The workstation again proved itself valuable on a recent character animation project for a children's series. Theory Studios was able to shift the After Effects elements to the workstation instead, which eliminated the need of having the compositor wait for it to run to completion on his own PC before tackling the next job in the queue.

Conclusion

Theory Studios now enjoys the simplicity of pre-configured Dell workstations equipped with the power of AMD Radeon PRO graphics for all its many types of projects. 

Learn more about the Dell Precision workstation and the Theory Studios story by viewing the PDF below

Theory-Studios-gains-greater-graphics-capability-with-Dell-and-AMD.pdf