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

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, win32asmguy said:

Technically Alder Lake S Desktop chips have 8 lanes of Gen4 equivalent bandwidth for the DMI link, 15.6GBps total. That should carry over to the mobile WM690 chipset as well.

 

Great, so if that holds true, and if one of the NVMe slots is directly connected to the CPU, then you could use three drives full speed and there would only be bandwidth contention on the 7770 if you tried to use all three "bottom" SSDs at the same time (but it would still give you two thirds bandwidth for each).  Or, maybe there would be a little bit of bandwidth contention if you also tried to throw in something like the a high load on the Ethernet port.

 

This also just makes me more interested in getting one of these in to mess with.  🙂  I do have four PCIe4 drives sitting here ready to go.

  

12 hours ago, alittleteapot said:

It's hard for me to find much information about efficiency cores with Hyper-V.

 

I use VMware Workstation a lot so I have similar questions.  I think in the long term there will be some work done to properly support P/E cores in a hypervisor (you would be able to allocate them separately for your VM and the Intel Thread Director stuff would be integrated between host and guest to help decide how to allocate load) but I am not aware that any work has really been done on this right now.  I'm sort of expecting to find myself in a situation where Windows 10 really wants to put the VM load on the E cores because it doesn't recognize it as a "foreground process", and I'll have to manually set the CPU affinity of the vmware-vmx process...

 

[Edit]

Dug up a thread and found that it is just as I feared, but there is a way to solve it right in VMware configuration.  But you can't really get it to balance between P and E cores, you basically have to pick one or the other.  (Looks like this guy was testing on Windows 11 too, so Thread Director support doesn't really fix it.)

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Pro/Workstation-16pro-on-alder-lake-system/td-p/2880327

Might be able to use VMware's focus priority feature to get Windows to switch between P cores or E cores depending on whether the VM has input focus or not.  (That would probably be fine with me.)

 

This may well be addressed in some way in a future update to VMware.

 

...Anyway, maybe Hyper-V will be smarter.

[tally]

I used a m.2 egpu setup with the last gen 7760. 

To my surprise, if you disable the integrated discrete gpu, all the m.2 connection will be pcie4.0, i don't know if this would happen to 7x70 as well.

[zhongze12345]

New Precisions seem to be an awesome upgrade over the 7x60 models... but I can't get over that one piece trackpad. I'm definitely nitpicking though; having to use a mouse with certain programs to get middle click functionality would be quite annoying.

 

I'm quite jealous that the A4500 gets 16GB vRAM compared to the 8GB in the A4000. Getting an eGPU with my 7760 should make up that difference and allow me to run the CPU at full wattage. We shall soon see whether CAMM is significantly more expensive which is a pretty big deal since buying RAM from the factory would have been cost prohibitive (for me).

[alittleteapot]

On 4/28/2022 at 3:23 AM, Aaron44126 said:

 

..  Since bandwidth between the PCH and CPU is also doubled, maybe you could run two of them at full speed now?  

 

Anyway, I am planning on a Storage Spaces array for three drives in those slots, similar to the configuration you describe.  A performance boost would be nice, but really just getting them grouped into one huge volume for simplicity of data management is my main goal.

 

I think I tested this scenario on my PC, and I was getting really fast transfers from just PCI 3 NVME drives when they were put onto PCI 4 lanes.  Sort of anecdotal, but it does make sense.  On my 7760, 3 x 2 TB Samsung 970 EVO's as a Parity Pool gets  6525.91 MB/s Read Speeds 411.16 Write Speeds (formatted w/ ReFS).  It seems fine for VMs, and yes, is definitely a convenience to have those drives in one pool.

[Antonius]

On 4/30/2022 at 2:37 AM, zhongze12345 said:

New Precisions seem to be an awesome upgrade over the 7x60 models... but I can't get over that one piece trackpad. I'm definitely nitpicking though; having to use a mouse with certain programs to get middle click functionality would be quite annoying.

.

I'm on the same boat here. First they remove dedicated page up/down keys and move the keyboard light key to F5 (a frequently used key that now has to share an fn use with the keyboard light), and now they are taking away physical buttons? I've used a Mac for work in the past, and personally, I have never been a fan of the entire trackpad being a clicking tool. Workstations were normally one of the few laptops that still have these.

[SvenC]

On 4/27/2022 at 4:26 PM, Dell-Mano_G said:

I don't restrict what CPU's you order without a discrete GFX.  You can order any CPU without discrete GFX.  I have been allowing this for multiple generations.  

 

Hi @Dell-Mano_G, will this become true for the Precision 5770 as well?

 

I would like an i7-12800h or i9-12900h combined with the iGPU, but currently the i7 auto selects the A2000 and the i9 the A3000

[yslalan]

19 hours ago, SvenC said:

 

Hi @Dell-Mano_G, will this become true for the Precision 5770 as well?

 

I would like an i7-12800h or i9-12900h combined with the iGPU, but currently the i7 auto selects the A2000 and the i9 the A3000

For MWS 5 series, UMA options always come with the most basic CPU option, as you know the i5-12600H

[serpro69]

Has anyone compared the FHD and UHD panels on some of the previous models, like 7x60 ? How does FHD fare? I've mostly had UHD, but now thinking to go with FHD instead. I tend to usually set scaling to 175-200% on the UHD and hence don't see much point in it, so the price difference could be put to a better use. Besides, FHD should in theory offer slightly better battery life as well. Are there any downsides to it though to not consider FHD as an option?

[Aaron44126]

51 minutes ago, serpro69 said:

Has anyone compared the FHD and UHD panels on some of the previous models, like 7x60 ? How does FHD fare? I've mostly had UHD, but now thinking to go with FHD instead. I tend to usually set scaling to 175-200% on the UHD and hence don't see much point in it, so the price difference could be put to a better use. Besides, FHD should in theory offer slightly better battery life as well. Are there any downsides to it though to not consider FHD as an option?

 

I remember seeing notable differences in some of the older models (7X30?), like the UHD panel being required to avoid 6-bits-per-color or to get a higher brightness panel.  In the case for this generation, it looks like the two panels on offer for the 7770 have the same specs in terms of brightness and color coverage.

 

The 7670 has two different FHD+ options and I think the baseline/cheaper one should be avoided (max brightness is quite low).

 

Normally it would be the case that a lower resolution screen saves you battery life.  UHD panels draw a bit more power and also require more "oomph" from the GPU in order to drive them.  But... in the case of the OLED panel in the 7670, there is a whole new consideration to the panel's power use.  In a normal LCD panel, the power use by the panel itself is fixed, changing mostly only based on the brightness level that you have selected.  In an OLED panel, the power use is determined by the overall brightness of the image on the screen as the pixels are individually lit (there is no backlight).  If you operate in mostly "dark mode" applications then you can keep the power use pretty low.  OLED would also offer the best color with a huge contrast ratio (true blacks are possible as the individual pixels can be shut off).

 

I'm getting a 7770 so OLED is not in consideration, but the UHD panel there does offer 120 Hz which is also a nice upgrade.  Also, I really appreciate the increased sharpness of a UHD panel (clarity of text, detail in images, etc.) even though it does not offer increased working space when running it at 200% scaling, so that's the way that I'll be going for sure.  I don't use the system on battery very often, though, so power use isn't factoring in as a consideration for me.

[Aaron44126]

Almost there!  Here are the full details on the HX CPUs.

 

 

Noticing that while 12950 has vPro and ECC support, it does not have “unlimited core OC” that 12900 has (not sure what that means exactly).

 

157W max power, wow.  (Dell may have limits set lower.)

[win32asmguy]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

Almost there!  Here are the full details on the HX CPUs.

 

 

Noticing that while 12950 has vPro and ECC support, it does not have “unlimited core OC” that 12900 has (not sure what that means exactly).

 

157W max power, wow.  (Dell may have limits set lower.)

157W is pretty high. With a good 12900HX, quality paste job, and undervolting it should have no problem exceeding even the 23000 CBR23 multicore score I can get with the new Clevo DTR and a 12900k limited to 125W. It will be fun to see some results when they are out.

[Aaron44126]

ASUS has their "pinnacle of performance" event starting momentarily.

 

The purpose of this event seems to be to drop new information on their Alder Lake HX laptop lineup, so, until recently I was expecting Intel announce Alder Lake HX this morning via press release or something, before ASUS's event.  Something similar happened last year with Tiger Lake H45; ASUS announced their event in advance without really saying what it was for, but everybody "knew", so we suspected that was the Tiger Lake H45 reveal date — and then Intel indeed had a CPU information dump shortly before ASUS's event.

 

However, nothing has come out of Intel this morning, and it is now widely expected that Intel will unveil Alder Lake HX tomorrow at Intel Vision 2022.  So, I am supposing that ASUS will do something similar to what Dell did and announce these laptops but without including full details on the CPUs?  (Unless perhaps Intel is going to be announcing Alder Lake HX simultaneously with this ASUS presentation, which would be a first I think.)

 

The interest here being that Precision 7X70 laptops cannot go on sale before Intel actually formally announces Alder Lake HX, which is a pretty poorly kept secret at this point.  Intel Vision 2022 starts tomorrow at 10 AM U.S. Eastern time (14:00 UTC).  An announcement during the opening keynote seems quite possible, or it could maybe even come slightly before the conference starts via press material.

[Aaron44126]

Well, I skimmed the presentation and it looks like it didn't have anything to do with Alder Lake HX after all.  🤦🏼‍♂️

 

They are copying Apple's "here's everything about our product in boxes on one screen" format...

Spoiler

 

The products were mostly "thin and light" type systems that wouldn't make sense for Alder Lake HX.

Spoiler

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-zenbook-duo-pro-flip-mid-2022-price-specs

 

Anyway... until tomorrow!  It might be a very interesting day (and I might have a huge hole in my wallet).

[Aaron44126]

The Precision 7770 spec sheet has been "unlocked" this morning.  You can pull it straight from Dell without an account login required.  (Full CPU spec options are included.)

 

https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/en-us/products/workstations/technical-support/precision-7770-spec-sheet.pdf

 

7670 still requires a login at the moment.

 

This just to say, something is happening on the Dell side.  Intel event starts in 30 minutes.

[Aaron44126]

Alder Lake HX is public as of now.

 

[Edit]

 

 

[Aaron44126]

 

Had a Dell rep tell me that Precision 7770 will be available to order by "end of May".

[Aaron44126]

Intel Ark pages for the 7X70 CPUs:

i5-12600HX, i7-12800HX, i7-12850HX, i9-12900HX, i9-12950HX

 

Looking at i9-12900HX vs. i9-12950HX:
These CPUs have the same clock speed (base & boost), same power limits, but a different feature set.

 

These features are listed for 12950HX only:

• ECC memory support
• Intel vPro platform eligibility
• Intel vPro enterprise platform eligibility
• Intel Active Management Technology (AMT)
• Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT)
• Intel Total Memory Encryption
• Intel Total Memory Encryption - Multi Key

(TXT is interesting to have missing on the 12900.  My ten-year-old Ivy Bridge i7-3820QM supports that, as do the 6th- and 8th-gen non-Xeon H-series CPUs that I have used in other Precision systems...  I've never actually used it for anything, though.)

 

12900 does have "better" overclocking capability but I'm not sure what the ins and outs of that are, yet.  Overclocking might not even be enabled in the Precision systems.  Dell has typically locked this out at the BIOS level.

 

Curiously, the 12950HX is listed as cheaper than 12900HX if you look at "recommended customer price" on the Ark pages.

 

Intel is also stating that these CPUs support 16 lanes of PCIe5, and that this is for "future proofing" with PCIe5 storage and graphics options hitting the market.  Storage makes sense, I guess (though there is no indication that 7X70 will support PCIe5 storage).  On the graphics side, I've seen rumors floating recently that NVIDIA's upcoming Lovelace GPUs will only support PCIe4 and not PCIe5, so there might not be much to use those PCIe5 lanes for in the near future.

[iieeann]

Not sure if this HX batch has fixed the spectec v2 issue.  Later on if firmware patch will impact the performance.

[__starrify__]

21 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

7670 still requires a login at the moment.

It seems that the 7670 spec sheet is no longer behind login:

https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/en-us/products/workstations/technical-support/precision-7670-spec-sheet.pdf

[yslalan]

7670/7770 are not available on May 10th as expected, a representative told me they will be available next week. Let’s see…

[foal]

5 hours ago, __starrify__ said:

It seems that the 7670 spec sheet is no longer behind login

Compared with the previous version there is only one diference - the "NVIDIA® GeForce RTX 3080Ti, 16GB, GDDR6 (performance chassis)" is missing.

[AL123]

4 hours ago, yslalan said:

7670/7770 are not available on May 10th as expected, a representative told me they will be available next week. Let’s see…

I'm not hearing such postive news from our contacts,  nothing is confirmed but for now  sounding more likely to be  June for actual ability to order 😞

Also current lead times for our recent precision laptop orders coming out of China factory have been 8 weeks + with delays due to part shortages and in transit, I've had one order for multiple units AWOL for over a month since leaving the factory, sadly not unheard of for us in the last 18 months, but 2-3 weeks in transit has been more typical. I'm hoping things will improve as lockdowns in China ease 

 

 

Still will be good to hear more from @Dell-Mano_G on the CPUs in the 7670 and 7770. I'm not sure if it is as simple as the PL1 and PL2 limits for the Cpu but it will be interesting to find out more on how the cooling solution has allowed for these more powerful CPUs and GPUs this generation.

 

Obviously will have to be some balancing when the something like an a4500 GPU and 12th gen CPU are both heavily loaded as the limit will be the 180W (7670 slim) or 240w for 7770 and 7670 performance (Iirc) 

 

 

 

 

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, foal said:

Compared with the previous version there is only one diference - the "NVIDIA® GeForce RTX 3080Ti, 16GB, GDDR6 (performance chassis)" is missing.

 

Good catch.  It is also missing from the 7770 spec sheet.  (I still have copies of the PDF from when it was not missing...)

 

With Precision 7X60, a GeForce option was available but you couldn't order it without going through a sales rep.  A "hidden" option of sorts.  The same might be true for 7X70.  I had thought that since it was on the spec sheet, they were going to make the option more broadly available and allow ordering a GeForce through the web site.

 

My speculation for some time now has been that there is some agreement between NVIDIA and OEMs that "workstation" systems must be configured with "enterprise" (previously "Quadro") GPUs and that is why you don't see a GeForce option on the public-facing side.  Similar to how Microsoft (previously) required systems configured with a "workstation" (Xeon) CPU to ship with Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, even though it was not practically required nor did it offer any practical benefit.  Just cash grabbing...  Obviously, NVIDIA enterprise GPUs do offer some real benefits over the GeForce (but you may not experience it unless you are running certain pro/ISV apps).

 

Anyway, even if Dell is offering the GeForce option (...when ordering through a sales rep...) there is also a chance that it will not be available right at launch.  (I have been going back and forth on which GPU to get, currently leaning towards 3080Ti, but if it is not available at launch then I guess I will be getting A5500.)

 

I asked @Dell-Mano_G about the GeForce option earlier and he didn't give any indication that they would not be offering it.

 

 [Edit]

1 hour ago, AL123 said:

Obviously will have to be some balancing when the something like an a4500 GPU and 12th gen CPU are both heavily loaded as the limit will be the 180W (7670 slim) or 240w for 7770 and 7670 performance (Iirc)

 

Just noting that 7670 slim will only be available with A2000 GPU and lower.  A3000 and up get the performance chassis.  Not yet sure but I imagine they will also force you up to the 240W PSU if you order a high-powered GPU.

[crion]

From what I understand of my memory of intel slides. one nvme M2 slot can be directly from the CPU thus PCIE 5.0. The other one is a PCH serving PCIE 4.0. M2 slots.

 

I don't know if the precision 7770 takes advantage of this?

 

 

[Aaron44126]

25 minutes ago, crion said:

From what I understand of my memory of intel slides. one nvme M2 slot can be directly from the CPU thus PCIE 5.0. The other one is a PCH serving PCIE 4.0. M2 slots.

 

I don't know if the precision 7770 takes advantage of this?

 

Alder Lake HX supports 16× PCIe5 lanes (than can be split out as 8+8 but no more granular than that), and 4× PCIe4 lanes.  (Additional PCIe4 and PCIe3 lanes are available from the PCH.)

 

Dell could have split the 16× PCIe5 lanes into 8+8, and used eight for the dGPU and four of the other eight for one of the NVMe slots.  I think if this were the case, we would see PCIe5 support advertised in the marketing material.  I suspect that Dell has taken the 4× PCIe4 lanes and used them for a dedicated NVMe slot, with all of the 16× PCIe5 lanes purposed for the dGPU (...even though it won't run them at PCIe5, and even though it might only use eight of them).

 

This is an interesting situation all around.

• Alder Lake HX uses the same die as Alder Lake S (desktop CPUs).  Intel has been touting as much.
• Alder Lake S supports PCIe4 only (20 lanes total).
• Early indications (leaks) were that Alder Lake S would support PCIe5 (16) and PCIe4 (4) — the same configuration that we are seeing with Alder Lake HX — but the final product had the PCIe5 lanes repurposed as PCIe4.
• Alder Lake S die shots seem to indicate that PCIe5 support is present but Intel decided to artificially nix it.  Maybe just because they don't see that the market is ready for PCIe5 and they don't want to put motherboard vendors through the work of building up more robust traces/connections to support it if it will not be used.  (There was some hubbub along these lines when PCIe4 first rolled out.)
• In light of this, it may well be the case that whether or not PCIe5 would actually be activated in Alder Lake HX was a bit up in the air until just recently, and laptop manufacturers may have "hedged their bets" and not taken it into account when designing their systems.

There has been no indication that Precision 7X70 will support PCIe5 at all, so I wouldn't expect it.

 

(With NVIDIA Lovelace GPUs supposedly supporting only up to PCIe4, and PCIe5 NVMe drives requiring active cooling, the immediate usefulness of PCIe5 in a laptop is suspect to me right now.  Maybe an upcoming revision of Intel Arc graphics will support it ...?  The 7X70 cooling design does have some airflow going over one of the NVMe slots.  Maybe it will be PCIe5-activated for next year's Raptor Lake HX systems.  They'll probably use the same chassis in next year's systems.)