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

[Aaron44126]

21 minutes ago, Reciever said:

The view of the "markets" hasn't been ideal, so in my uneducated opinion they are trying to leverage the new release into a new fiscal year / quarter. 

 

Hmm.  Dell's fiscal quarter actually ends at the end of July.  (Their announcement said that they'd have these systems out during FY2Q, and they have a whole month to go to hit that.)  They've been reasonably upfront about the challenges getting validation systems out on time in light of the China COVID from some weeks back.  (...As upfront as you could expect Dell to be, anyway.)  Even if they are sitting on the parts inventory to start building (which I believe that they are), they can't actually start selling the systems until they pass ISV validation/certification — something that is not required for the gaming Alder Lake HX systems that are starting to drop.

[Reciever]

11 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

Hmm.  Dell's fiscal quarter actually ends at the end of July.  (Their announcement said that they'd have these systems out during FY2Q, and they have a whole month to go to hit that.)  They've been reasonably upfront about the challenges getting validation systems out on time in light of the China COVID from some weeks back.  (...As upfront as you could expect Dell to be, anyway.)  Even if they are sitting on the parts inventory to start building (which I believe that they are), they can't actually start selling the systems until they pass ISV validation/certification.

Yeah that makes sense, then perhaps they want their cake and eat it too? Release towards end of their fiscal year that way consumer sales begin and paint the picture for the enterprise to follow in the following quarter to give a strong showing? 

 

I'm so glad I'm not rich enough to have to care about these sort of things lol I'm giddy enough with this forum and even it there is a ton of hypothetical to weed out 

[operator]

On 6/16/2022 at 2:09 PM, Aaron44126 said:

Dell seems to have revoked access to the service manuals.  I'm getting an access denied error now.

 

Seems like the access is possible again. At least I can use the online service manuals again for both 7670 and 7770.

[Hank]

On 6/20/2022 at 8:42 AM, operator said:

I heard just today that "ready to order" is postponed again for another week to the 28th.  Can anyone confirm?

 

From my business rep for a 7770: "I checked with my manager and it got delayed to Thursday the 23^rd now, but he thinks this will go into production on Thursday and we won’t need to replace the order."

 

Here's hoping this is it.  The HP and Lenovo systems are still "Coming Soon" and look attractive, especially the keyboard layout.

 

[Aaron44126]

13 minutes ago, Hank said:

From my business rep for a 7770: "I checked with my manager and it got delayed to Thursday the 23^rd now, but he thinks this will go into production on Thursday and we won’t need to replace the order."

 

23rd makes more sense than 24th.  (Maybe 24th launch in Japan is just due to time zone difference, or maybe they typically have systems launch one day later.)

 

Anyway, each time they delay it, the delay is less, so it seems like they have to be narrowing down on the real date.  (7th -> 16th -> 21st -> 23rd...)

 

I would triple-check to make sure that your order is good if it was placed before launch.  I've seen stories of orders that get stuck and don't make progress if something odd happened to them.  And even if it is good, I would expect that it might not advance to "in production" status for a few days after the launch yet.  (That's just going from my past experience with launch orders.)

[Dell-Mano_G]

FYI, all orders placed in the system prior to launch will be canceled once we launch.  Aaron44126 is correct.  You will need to reenter your orders.  

[operator]

16 minutes ago, Dell-Mano_G said:

FYI, all orders placed in the system prior to launch will be canceled once we launch.  Aaron44126 is correct.  You will need to reenter your orders.  

Thanks. Can you shed some light on to the release dates for 7670 and 7770?

[serpro69]

My rep told me today that release is pushed to 28th.

[Aaron44126]

I checked with a rep and was given Monday 6/27 as the tentative ready to order date for both systems.  (I'm skeptical, 6/28 seems more likely.)  It does seem like 7770 has slipped beyond this week though.  At this point, grain of salt all around, it seems like we're just stuck "a few days before launch" until it's ready.

 

Anyway, progress is happening somewhere.  Someone made the support pages live.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/precision-16-7670-laptop/

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/precision-17-7770-laptop/

 

Not everything is filled in yet but it will probably be coming over the next hours/days.  You can check the driver list, it is populated with some stuff.

 

[Edit]

BIOS file name is "CinnamonBayAdl_1.0.0.exe"...  I wonder if "Cinnamon Bay" is an internal codename for these systems or something.

[Conan11]

On 6/16/2022 at 3:49 PM, ZN_lucky said:

The recent Dell docking stations were not really supported by Linux (it worked for an hour, then shut off the external display).

Was it a problem with supporting the laptop on linux, or the docking station? What model? Was it ever fixed?

[Aaron44126]

Tidbits from going through the drivers.

• The BIOS says it was posted on June 20, but the file has a digital signature date of March 21 — they've had the initial 1.0.0 BIOS prepared for a while now.  (There will probably be a BIOS update pushed out around shipping time.)
• The NVIDIA driver is version 511.79, which is a bit older than the past two NVIDIA driver updates that Dell has published for the Precision 7X10-7X60 systems, which also support the 7X70 GPUs (according to the drivers' INF files).  The date on this driver is February 10, and it also supports all Precision GPUs back through 7X10.  (It's probably the one that they are using for certification; I suspect that it will be updated within the first few weeks after the systems are out — especially with Windows 11 version 22H2 coming down soon, they'll want to get a WDDM 3.1 version out.)
• Not all of the drivers are posted yet.  No audio driver for example, except the USB one for docks, and the Intel Rapid Storage / RAID driver isn't there either.

[win32asmguy]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

I checked with a rep and was given Monday 6/27 as the tentative ready to order date for both systems.  (I'm skeptical, 6/28 seems more likely.)  It does seem like 7770 has slipped beyond this week though.  At this point, grain of salt all around, it seems like we're just stuck "a few days before launch" until it's ready.

 

Anyway, progress is happening somewhere.  Someone made the support pages live.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/precision-16-7670-laptop/

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/precision-17-7770-laptop/

 

Not everything is filled in yet but it will probably be coming over the next hours/days.  You can check the driver list, it is populated with some stuff.

 

[Edit]

BIOS file name is "CinnamonBayAdl_1.0.0.exe"...  I wonder if "Cinnamon Bay" is an internal codename for these systems or something.

Dell should launch in a few days if I had to guess. Lenovo has some P16 configs posted to their USA site. Nothing in stock for immediate shipment, but they do have pricing and specs to compare against! Still no activity for the Zbook Fury 16 G9, but IIRC HP had a delayed launch last year too. Those guys on the HP workstation team not too far from where I live in Colorado so I knew a couple from local LUG meetups have a lot on their plate so it is hard to meet release dates.

 

The Precision is still the most interesting of the bunch given the 17 inch screen, 3080Ti option, and hopefully the revamped cooling system allows the 12950HX to sustain higher power limits than we saw in the 7760 even if its in a CPU-only load scenario.

[Aaron44126]

23 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

Lenovo has some P16 configs posted to their USA site. Nothing in stock for immediate shipment, but they do have pricing and specs to compare against!

 

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/thinkpad-p16-16-intel/21d6004sus

"Ships in 4+ months"

👀

 

Maybe that's placeholder (but it certainly won't be making them look good vs. competitors either way).

[Aaron44126]

Got a message from a rep via email this morning.

 

The engineering and manufacturing teams have identified issues that will prevent us from hitting RTO (Ready to Order) on 6/23. Currently, we do not have a revised date to message out but will share this once available.

 

Huh.  6/23 was a few days ago.  Thanks, I guess...

 

So, I went to ask a random chat rep and they've always been able to give me a date before, but today the person didn't seem to be able to get me a date.  (Could have just been the rep.  S/he seemed really interested in getting me to pick another system which is available now.)

 

Anyway.  All this to say, I won't be surprised if 6/28 comes and goes without release yet again...

 

[Edit]

Got a voicemail saying that they hope to have a date by the end of the week, we'll see.....  Anyway, seems like I'm starting to get noticed for chatting in to ask about this semi-regularly :-\.

[operator]

Had a chat with two different Dell reps in different countries. Seems like they do not have any additional info yet. Both said as of now they expect the RTO date to be "earliest end of June or early July". But they also could not confirm that on 28th nothing will happen - they just don't know.

But as @Aaron44126 said, I won't be surprised if June 28th comes and goes without a release ....

 

@Aaron44126 does this have any (negative) effects at all that you are known by Dell for semi-regular chat requests?

[Aaron44126]

7 hours ago, operator said:

@Aaron44126 does this have any (negative) effects at all that you are known by Dell for semi-regular chat requests?

 

I don't think so.  Just, the guy who called me and left a voicemail, his message was along the lines of "This is in regards to your chat, Precision 7770 is not launched yet, we'll email you when we know something, chill out."  The guy who called was someone that I have communicated with before, but not the same guy that I had just chatted with.  There must be some kind of monitoring or sharing going on, on their end.  ...I don't necessarily expect the "email when we know something" to be prompt, it was also the same guy who let me know on 6/26 that the 6/23 launch isn't happening.  (And the same guy who told me on 6/20 that the launch date was still set for 6/21, after we already had skepticism on that.)

 

Wouldn't be too surprised if notice has been taken that we are sharing dates that reps give us and either guidance has come down to stop handing out dates, or whoever actually makes the tentative RTO date available to the reps has stopped doing so.  I still think that we are "a few days" away from launch and this week isn't out of the question, and hopefully next week if this week doesn't work out.  If they were pushing the launch back by a few days at a time last week, they have to be close.  Hopefully the next date is the "real" one, if we do actually get a date before the launch happens.

 

(I wonder if @AL123 has heard anything ...?)

 

I'll note that Dell likes Tuesday/Thursday launches.  Next week Monday 7/4 is a U.S. holiday so that might make a 7/5 launch less likely.  If we don't see a launch this week, we might be waiting until 7/7.  (They could always break the Tuesday/Thursday "rule" though.)

 

[Edit]

I was poking around the ISV certification site and I see Precision 7X70 showing up in the list, so it seems that certifications have happened (or are in progress).  Example: Adobe.  I didn't check this before now so I don't know how recent they are.  But, NVIDIA driver 512.78 is newer than the one currently posted by Dell for both 7X70 and prior systems.  (NVIDIA posted it on their site in mid-May.)

 

[Edit 2]

Also in there for AutoCAD (with a much older NVIDIA driver, from November 2021).

[AL123]

9 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

I don't think so.  Just, the guy who called me and left a voicemail, his message was along the lines of "This is in regards to your chat, Precision 7770 is not launched yet, we'll email you when we know something, chill out."  The guy who called was someone that I have communicated with before, but not the same guy that I had just chatted with.  There must be some kind of monitoring or sharing going on, on their end.  ...I don't necessarily expect the "email when we know something" to be prompt, it was also the same guy who let me know on 6/26 that the 6/23 launch isn't happening.  (And the same guy who told me on 6/20 that the launch date was still set for 6/21, after we already had skepticism on that.)

 

Wouldn't be too surprised if notice has been taken that we are sharing dates that reps give us and either guidance has come down to stop handing out dates, or whoever actually makes the tentative RTO date available to the reps has stopped doing so.  I still think that we are "a few days" away from launch and this week isn't out of the question, and hopefully next week if this week doesn't work out.  If they were pushing the launch back by a few days at a time last week, they have to be close.  Hopefully the next date is the "real" one, if we do actually get a date before the launch happens.

 

(I wonder if @AL123 has heard anything ...?)

 

I'll note that Dell likes Tuesday/Thursday launches.  Next week Monday 7/4 is a U.S. holiday so that might make a 7/5 launch less likely.  If we don't see a launch this week, we might be waiting until 7/7.  (They could always break the Tuesday/Thursday "rule" though.)

 

 

Not heard any updates yet other than it was delayed again on Friday 😞

[operator]

Had another feedback. As already known, RTO date was postponed but this time with no fixed date in the future. Maybe they are sick of postponing a few days just to find out (like the customers do) that it won't work at the end. 

So anything can happen - anytime......which could also mean weeks/months. 😞

 

Hopefully not like the 4 months+ on the Lenovo page. 🙂

[Aaron44126]

I think there is some degree of that going on.  They have gotten to the point where they don't want to put out a date that they can't hit, so there not going to put out a date until they are sure that they can hit it.  (Completely speculating but it would make sense.)

 

If that is true, then:

• The date should still be "soon" (...again, they were delaying by just a few days at a time leading up until now, so they have to be close).
• We might have little or no notice between a date being given out and the actual system availability.

...Also possible that they hit a bigger snag of some sort and it will take them an indeterminate amount of time to work through.

 

[Edit]

Stuff is still happening.  New full 7770 driver package released this morning.  (There are some drivers in this package that are not yet available standalone / individually.)

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=P1HJG

List of drivers: https://dl.dell.com/FOLDER08674506M/1/Dell-Precision-7770-P1HJG_Win10_1.0_A01.html

 

[Edit 2]

Got this today from a different source, identical wording to what I received on Sunday.  I think that this must be the update that the reps get or are able to see from further up: Currently, we do not have a revised date to message out but will share this once available.

[serpro69]

1 hour ago, operator said:

Hopefully not like the 4 months+ on the Lenovo page.

 

I hope not :D I've stopped bugging my sales rep - he said he'll get back to me when he has any info, so I'm just training my patience skills :D

 

But it depends why Lenovo is pushing it so far away. Are they having supply issues? And if so, which parts? It could potentially affect other manufacturers.

[Aaron44126]

While there have been a few NVIDIA driver releases published by Dell that support the 7X70 GPUs, today's 516.59 is the first one published directly by NVIDIA that supports the GPUs in the 7X70 systems.

https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/190412/en-us/

 

The NVIDIA enterprise driver does not support GeForce 3080 Ti in Precision 7X70.  There are also new Game Ready and Studio drivers (same version number) that support 7X70+3080Ti.  (This is the first Studio driver release that supports 7X70+3080Ti; I haven't been checking Game Ready drivers.)

https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/190553/en-us/

https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/190617/en-us/

 

The Dell-published driver supports both pro-RTX and GeForce in the same package.

 

...All this to say, "stuff is happening" and also when the systems do finally launch we will (as usual) have the choice between Dell- and NVIDIA-provided drivers.

[FabeFromBOD]

Hi all,

 

New dates are announced RTO plan for 5 or 7/7 🤞

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, FabeFromBOD said:

New dates are announced 5 or 7/7

I checked with a chat rep just now about Precision 7770 and was unable to get this confirmed.  S/he said that they had a target date of June 23, but the launch was delayed, and they don't have a new date yet.  (Same line we've been getting since earlier this week.)  However, this time the delay was attributed to an "unexpected parts shortage".

 

I hope your dates are correct and this news just hasn't made it down to whatever the U.S. chat reps are looking at yet... and if that is the case, I hope that the date does not slip out any further.  🙂  I'll check for a rep response again tomorrow.

 

Still thinking July 7 is a likely date, but nothing hard to go off of there, other than it being "far enough out", Dell liking Tuesday/Thursday launches, and the upcoming U.S. holiday weekend.

 

(...And yesterday I spent some time figuring out what it would take to get a FedEx package redirected if the system happens to ship while I am traveling in August.  Looks like a pretty straight-forward process, just adds one day to the receipt time.)

 

[Edit]

Precision 7770 launching on 7/7...  Ha, well, nice alignment of numbers anyway.

[Conan11]

35 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

(...And yesterday I spent some time figuring out what it would take to get a FedEx package redirected if the system happens to ship while I am traveling in August.  Looks like a pretty straight-forward process, just adds one day to the receipt time.)

How do you arrange it? When I spoke with DELL they told me you need to fix the address at the time of making the payment.

[Aaron44126]

3 hours ago, Conan11 said:

How do you arrange it? When I spoke with DELL they told me you need to fix the address at the time of making the payment.

 

In the U.S., Dell ships systems through FedEx (at least that has been the case for everything they have shipped to me in the last decade).

 

If you sign up for FedEx Delivery Manager (free), you can exercise an option to "deliver your package to a more convenient address" (not free).  You have to make the request using the tracking number and it has to be before midnight on the day that the package is scheduled to be delivered.  I think that you will also have to show documentation of your address (physical ID, utility bill, or something) to retrieve the package at a different location.

https://www.fedex.com/en-us/faq/delivery-manager.html

 

If you think that you will have trouble being present for the system delivery, you can also reroute it to a local pickup location (free) and retrieve it at your convenience.  You can also schedule a vacation hold (free) and FedEx will not attempt delivery during the hold.

 

UPS has similar options.  I would imagine a number of local carriers in other countries do as well.

 

[Edit]

Also —

https://www.fedex.com/en-us/shipping/hold-at-location.html