Precision 7670 & 7770 pre-release discussion (Alder Lake)

[microdou]

3 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Curious why you guys selected A5500 over GeForce RTX 3080 Ti

I'm not an expert at all. I just want to make sure I have the maximum capability to use cuda for machine learning 😅 It's very possible I wasted some money here...

 

3 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Did anyone else order from U.S. territory?  I'm also wondering why I'm the only one with an early August ETA.

I'm from US. I guess it's because you ordered way early than me. Some company might have triggered a batch order in between?

[microdou]

38 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

I got my order in on the first day, but I know @operator ordered before me (from Europe) and also has a late August date.

Maybe the GPU availability plays out here? Apparently not many people ordered 3080Ti so no shortage for this variant.

[win32asmguy]

2 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Thanks.  I got my order in on the first day, but I know @operator ordered before me (from Europe) and also has a late August date.  We were previously speculating that maybe 7770 systems are a bit more ready to go than 7670, but I haven't seen any other early 7770's either.  So, I'm little bit worried that my estimate is inappropriately optimistic because it doesn't line up with everyone else's.  But it did go to production status within 72 hours, and based on past experience, that means it should be here within two weeks or so.

I have 7/26 ESD and 7/29 EDD, for a 7770 with 12950HX/3080Ti/32GB/FHD. It may ship on time as I have already received a notification from Fedex that a shipping label was created.

[Aaron44126]

55 minutes ago, win32asmguy said:

I have 7/26 ESD and 7/29 EDD, for a 7770 with 12950HX/3080Ti/32GB/FHD. It may ship on time as I have already received a notification from Fedex that a shipping label was created.

 

Nice!  I knew that you were looking but didn't realize that you had ordered one.  That should mean that the system has already made its way from China (or wherever the factory is) and should be heading out via FedEx at any time, hopefully tracking is updated with an exact delivery date soon.

 

(Looking back at the Precision 7X30 launch timeframe... My NBR posts seem to indicate that with the 7530, I saw a FedEx shipping label printed on Friday, but no real tracking activity until Monday, and then the system arrived on Tuesday.)

 

Questions —

When did you place your order?  Which shipping method did you use?  What date does it say your system entered production?

You could have it next week 😄
 

[Edit]
Just checking FedEx Delivery Manager, I have a shipping label that was created early this morning and then cancelled.  It has a status of “Pending” and not “Cancelled”, though.  Weird.  Anyway, I wonder if mine is almost ready, too…

[pintie]

7 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

 

Curious why you guys selected A5500 over GeForce RTX 3080 Ti?  GeForce will offer the same performance for cheaper in many cases.  Do you use ISV/professional applications?  (If so, it totally makes sense.)

 

The Professional Cards do have extra Education discounts for universitys. 3080 Ti - A5500 would have been no big difference.

The Axxxx Chips have a better binning and often run a little more efficent. (silicon lottery) at least there were times when this was the case. Don't know if this still is

 

i do have some use that the 3080ti can't do (at least the driver doesn't offer). Splitting the Chip for different VM's for example. (AI computing)

 

 

 

[operator]

2 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

I have 7/26 ESD and 7/29 EDD, for a 7770 with 12950HX/3080Ti/32GB/FHD. It may ship on time as I have already received a notification from Fedex that a shipping label was created.

 

As we already discussed - really seems like 7770 was 'more ready' than 7670. Mine is still not in production state. Order confirmed on 07/07 at 8AM

ESD Aug 9th (again a Dell tuesday). 😉

[Aaron44126]

Reading around elsewhere, seems like it is normal for the shipping label print step to happen as soon as the system is on the way over from the factory, but (obviously) no tracking activity until a few days after that when it hits the local carrier.  Clearly going by cargo plane (FedEx label origin location is right next to the Chicago airport).

 

Just not sure why it looks like they cancelled my shipping label, then…. Definitely the Dell package, it has my order number in the reference field.

[Conan11]

10 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

I was going to check but it looks like that video has now been marked private... but you are right, I'd expect a touch/OLED to be glossy.  That said, I have seen matte LCD touchscreens before, and I've never seen an OLED panel in a laptop at all (just in phones which are obviously glossy), so my expectations might be off.

Specs say "anti-glare" which is more similar to glossy than to matte.

[Aaron44126]

On 7/15/2022 at 6:32 PM, Aaron44126 said:

Just not sure why it looks like they cancelled my shipping label, then….

 

Dell order status page says “build complete”.
 

New shipping label created this morning.  FedEx says delivery on Wednesday (but they don't have the package yet).

 

[Edit]

Dell also knocked 10 days off of the estimated delivery date, which is now July 26.  Seems like they're still giving themselves plenty of leeway if they're really going to be ready to deliver the package to FedEx on Monday...  Also, the “cancel order” button is now disabled.

[operator]

6 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

Dell order status page says “build complete”.
 

New shipping label created this morning.  FedEx says delivery on Wednesday (but they don't have the package yet).

 

Awesome how fast this happened!

Hope to see mine at least in production state the next week.

[win32asmguy]

On 7/15/2022 at 2:22 PM, Aaron44126 said:

Nice!  I knew that you were looking but didn't realize that you had ordered one.  That should mean that the system has already made its way from China (or wherever the factory is) and should be heading out via FedEx at any time, hopefully tracking is updated with an exact delivery date soon.

 

(Looking back at the Precision 7X30 launch timeframe... My NBR posts seem to indicate that with the 7530, I saw a FedEx shipping label printed on Friday, but no real tracking activity until Monday, and then the system arrived on Tuesday.)

 

Questions —

When did you place your order?  Which shipping method did you use?  What date does it say your system entered production?

You could have it next week 😄
 

[Edit]
Just checking FedEx Delivery Manager, I have a shipping label that was created early this morning and then cancelled.  It has a status of “Pending” and not “Cancelled”, though.  Weird.  Anyway, I wonder if mine is almost ready, too…

Ordered on the morning of 7/7, with the 2 day shipping option. So far it is only in the confirmed status.

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, win32asmguy said:

Ordered on the morning of 7/7, with the 2 day shipping option. So far it is only in the confirmed status.

 

I wonder if your system is built but the status is "stuck".  Does FedEx show an an anticipated ship date?  Strange that they'd issue a label if they weren't preparing to ship within the next few days.

 

("Shipper reference" should be your Dell order number.)

[Reshen]

Hi Everyone,

 

My first post to this forum! Thanks to all the contributors for the great content.

 

I'm in the engineering research game and I've used precision workstations for many years. My current 7510 needs to be replaced. It still does the job brilliantly, but it's out of warranty and the CPU fan is on it's last legs. (I can't seem to get this part locally in South Africa, so I'll likely import it and do the repair myself).

 

I'm looking to get either a 7570 or 7770 as replacement with a fairly high spec. I've no doubt this will be a huge improvement on my 7510, but still have the good bits that makes the precision ideal for my kind of work.

 

Now I've been toying about the idea about getting a 5770 instead for the light weight. I know the screen in not matte and mouse pad is enormous, but what I'm most afraid of is that it may throttle (excessively) under load compared to it's bigger brothers.

 

Does anyone have any experience with the 5770 and does the 12th Gen Intels' get away from the throttling issues?

 

 

[Aaron44126]

3 hours ago, Reshen said:

Now I've been toying about the idea about getting a 5770 instead for the light weight. I know the screen in not matte and mouse pad is enormous, but what I'm most afraid of is that it may throttle (excessively) under load compared to it's bigger brothers.

 

All of these systems will "throttle" in the sense that you won't be able to run them at the maximum turbo speed indefinitely.  You will always hit the thermal ceiling and/or the PL1 power limit if you run the system with a high CPU load for an extended period of time.

 

So basically:

• 7770 will have the best performance of the three, with the biggest thermal solution and the highest power limits.
• While you will experience "throttling", you will not likely experience "excessive throttling" with any of the systems.
• ...Each of them would be a big step up from the Precision 7510.

As for the relative maximum performance between Precision 7770, 7670, and 5770, it is too early to say.  We need some systems out there so people can take measurements.

 

(Biggest issues to me with Precision 5770 are lack of a numeric keypad with the keyboard, and only two NVMe slots...)

 

————

 

Dell re-posted the 7670 unboxing video (but it's not any more of an unboxing video than before).

[Reshen]

Awesome @Aaron44126! Thanks for that.

 

I think I'm going to go for the 7670. The 16in screen should be fine and good compromise over the size the of the 7770.

 

Any thoughts which GPU is the way to go? A5500 or 3080ti? I will mainly use CAD and CFD, but I'd like to do some gaming as well.

 

 

[Aaron44126]

45 minutes ago, Reshen said:

Any thoughts which GPU is the way to go? A5500 or 3080ti? I will mainly use CAD and CFD, but I'd like to do some gaming as well.

 

The A5500 and 3080Ti have the same specs (same number & types of cores, and same amount of VRAM).  The difference comes down to the feature set.  NVIDIA blocks some "professional-only" features on the GeForce line, like wireframing, double-sided polygons, and even some lower-level stuff like allowing your GPU to be attached to a VM.  For gaming, it will not make a difference, but for professional apps that utilize the GPU, it might.

 

Check your apps and see if there is any benefit to having a Quadro or "enterprise" NVIDIA GPU.  (Look at documentation, or maybe forum/web posts from users of that app.)  I think some CAD apps will benefit from this.  But, if there is no benefit, then there is no reason to spend that money.  The cost to go form 3080Ti to A5500 is about $800 USD.

 

(...Also, A5500 has ECC vRAM but 3080Ti does not.)

 

[Edit]

Another thing.  These high-end GPUs will be very much power-throttled, especially on the 7670 which will have a lower power limit than the 7770.  (These GPU chips are also used in desktop cards at over 2× the power level.)  Still waiting for benchmarks, but I suspect that the performance difference between A4500 and A5500 in the 7670 will be less than 5% on almost all workloads.

[pintie]

40 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

and even some lower-level stuff like allowing your GPU to be attached to a VM. 

 

Well it will work with 3080ti, too. What only works with Axxxx is, that you can split the GPU in a way it looks like different physical GPUs to the system. If you use multiple VM's that could be a real benefit. And you can change the splitting on the fly.

 

In terms of CAD... I use Fusion 360, solidworks (catia in the past) - never sensed any difference to consumer cards.

 

ECC is nice - but i would only pay for that in a real criticial enviroment.

 

The Desktop Version of the A5500 is speced to 230W. I guess the mobile version will get half of that in a good case where the CPU doesn't need that much. 3080TI is speced with 350W.... so more like 3 times as much.

The mobile Version runs at a much better efficiency so you will not get 2 or 3 times the calculating power. but still...

 

 

 

 

[Aaron44126]

On 7/16/2022 at 10:51 AM, Aaron44126 said:

Dell order status page says “build complete”.

 

Just got this email from Dell (approx. 48 hours after the order status page was already showing "build complete").

 

 

Also watching the FedEx tracking page for movement.  (Dell hasn't provided the FedEx tracking number yet.  I found it through FedEx Delivery Manager, also two days ago.)  Final bit of waiting might be the worst part.  But, at least they are beating the original August 5 EDD.

 

Did some poking around Reddit, seems like it is "normal" for them to miss the estimated delivery date shown when the FedEx label is generated (July 20 in my case).  Still, arrival this week is not out of the question.  I am close enough to the Chicago origination location shown on the FedEx label that I should get it just one (business) day after it is handed over to FedEx.

 

I wonder how much business days matter to Dell from the production standpoint.  (All of my order status changes have happened during the weekend.)

 

————

  

45 minutes ago, pintie said:

The Desktop Version of the A5500 is speced to 230W. I guess the mobile version will get half of that in a good case where the CPU doesn't need that much. 3080TI is speced with 350W.... so more like 3 times as much.

The mobile Version runs at a much better efficiency so you will not get 2 or 3 times the calculating power. but still...

 

NVIDIA's "naming" of their products doesn't line up between desktop and mobile anymore.  Laptop A5500 (7424 CUDA cores) is closest to desktop A4500 (7168 CUDA cores / 200W TDP).  On the GeForce side, laptop 3080 Ti slots between desktop 3070 Ti (6144 CUDA cores / 290W TDP) and 3080 (8704 CUDA cores / 320W TDP).

 

...But with the tight power limit on the mobile side, you'll see the similar desktop GPUs trounce the mobile ones just by operating at a much higher power level — especially given that the desktop GPUs can boost over TDP, but the laptop GPUs will have a hard power limit of probably 150W or less.   Lower power levels are more efficient, so the performance difference with regards to power is not a linear relationship.

[Reshen]

Ok, I got my local rep to quote on a 7670.

 

Went for the i9 12950, 64GB, 3080ti and the 4k OLED screen. A couple of 2TB SSDs too.

 

I wonder if the screen is overkill? Need to confirm that ANSYS, Solidworks etc can actually ran at that resolution.

 

 

[operator]

1 hour ago, Reshen said:

I wonder if the screen is overkill? 

 

I had the same question, but I worked so many years on FHD on Laptop screens that I wanted an upgrade. Also I wanted to stick to Touchscreen. With 7560 Touch was only available on FHD and with 7670 Touch is only available with 4k.

The best solution for me would be something between FHD and 4k - but this isn't an option here so I went for the 4k OLED.

 

  

1 hour ago, Reshen said:

A couple of 2TB SSDs too.

 

Why do you spend the money for expensive Dell SSDs and not buy them separately?

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, Reshen said:

I wonder if the screen is overkill?

 

20 minutes ago, operator said:

I had the same question, but I worked so many years on FHD on Laptop screens that I wanted an upgrade.

 

If you haven't used a high-DPI panel before, welcome to the world of Windows scaling issues...

In Settings -> Display under "Scale and layout" you can set the scaling ratio for your display, which would normally be 100% on FHD.  200% on 4K will give you the same amount of working space as 100% on FHD (but with four times the level of detail/sharpness in images and text).  If your eyes can tolerate it then you could try stepping down to 175% for a bit more working space and a bit less detail.

 

...Not all apps handle scaling properly.  Many of them will need to be restarted if you change the scaling level in order for them to render properly at the new scaling level.  Some apps improperly "claim" to support high-DPI but do not implement it properly, resulting in them being rendered with very tiny text/UI, or just having broken layouts.

 

Using multiple monitors at different scaling levels adds another complication — some apps support per-monitor scaling, some support scaling but only off of whatever the primary monitor is set up (they will be bitmap-scaled up or down from there for secondary monitors, making them appear slightly blurry), and some don't support scaling at all and will just run scaled up from 100%.

 

Sometimes there is a strange mixed bag.  (I.e., Microsoft Outlook supports per-monitor scaling but Microsoft OneNote does not, both installed from the same MS Office 365 package...)

 

This compatibility setting is your friend.  If an app is misbehaving, then it almost always makes it work.  (It will cause the app to always be run at 100% scaling level and then bitmap-scaled up for your display.)

 

If you have the display set to 200% scaling, then an app that only supports 100% scaling will be rendered with pixel doubling and not a blur filter, which is nice.

 

(You can actually play with it now on a FHD screen.  Set the scaling level to 125% or 150%.  You will lose working space, but you can see how your apps behave with scaling.)

 

...

I probably made it sound a bit more scary than it is.  Most up-to-date apps work fine on a high-DPI panel with no extra configuration required.  I really run into issues only with older apps, obscure business apps where the developer just doesn't care to address this, and basically anything Java-related.

[pintie]

2 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

NVIDIA's "naming" of their products doesn't line up between desktop and mobile anymore.  Laptop A5500 (7424 CUDA cores) is closest to desktop A4500 (7168 CUDA cores / 200W TDP).  On the GeForce side, laptop 3080 Ti slots between desktop 3070 Ti (6144 CUDA cores / 290W TDP) and 3080 (8704 CUDA cores / 320W TDP).

you're right... didn't look it up 🙂

 

[operator]

15 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

welcome to the world of Windows scaling issues...

 

15 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Using multiple monitors at different scaling levels adds another complication

 

Sounds like a challenge. I used to work on 21:9 screens (I guess I don't need scaling here) and unplug regularly to take my notebook into another room to work only with the notebook screen (where I'd need the scaling again).

 

[AL123]

7 hours ago, pintie said:

 

Well it will work with 3080ti, too. What only works with Axxxx is, that you can split the GPU in a way it looks like different physical GPUs to the system. If you use multiple VM's that could be a real benefit. And you can change the splitting on the fly.

 

In terms of CAD... I use Fusion 360, solidworks (catia in the past) - never sensed any difference to consumer cards.

 

ECC is nice - but i would only pay for that in a real criticial enviroment.

 

The Desktop Version of the A5500 is speced to 230W. I guess the mobile version will get half of that in a good case where the CPU doesn't need that much. 3080TI is speced with 350W.... so more like 3 times as much.

The mobile Version runs at a much better efficiency so you will not get 2 or 3 times the calculating power. but still...

 

 

 

 

For Solidworks only pro cards are certified and supported, it will run on consumer cards but generally with complex data sets the speed of rotation, zoom etc will be significantly slower. Also if you run into an issue that is specific to a consumer card then only best efforts will be made to workaround/ fix whereas if you have a pro card the developers will work with NVIDIA to resolve. So yeh for professional apps it’s worth checking support for sure 

[AL123]

7 hours ago, Reshen said:

Ok, I got my local rep to quote on a 7670.

 

Went for the i9 12950, 64GB, 3080ti and the 4k OLED screen. A couple of 2TB SSDs too.

 

I wonder if the screen is overkill? Need to confirm that ANSYS, Solidworks etc can actually ran at that resolution.

 

 

Most core Solidworks stuff will run fairly well on 4k so long as you are running a recent version however I would highly recommend a pro card like the rtx a4500, the consumer cards are not supported/ certified for Solidworks and I would imagine the same for Ansys, for Solidworks view manipulation will be slower on consumer cards, you may miss some graphics features and the support you get In event of any issues will be limited