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

[ZN_lucky]

1. Do we have any info on when will models with DIMM and interposer be orderable?

 

2. Does an OLED display have a "background light" refresh rate? (I know there is no background light, I mean how is dimming implemented in the hardware). Eg if someone is irritated by PWM'd backlight with non-OLED displayed, does OLED solve this? I mean are the individual LEDs brightness controlled by PWM also or is do the LEDs always stay on and the brightness is controlled by the current to each LED?

 

Googling the OLED PWM issue, there are a few threads about this, eg

 

@Dell-Mano_G Can you share some specs of the OLED display in the Precision 7670? Eg could lower-brightness PWM be an issue?

 

[Victor]

4 hours ago, microdou said:

Mine the same ...

 

And now worse news:

 

"The Chinese city of Shenzhen told 100 major companies including iPhone maker Foxconn to set up "closed-loop" systems as it battles COVID-19."

 

https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2022-07-25/china-puts-iphone-maker-cnooc-into-shenzhen-closed-loop-to-battle-covid-bloomberg-news

 

I don't know if Dell factory is affected 😭

 

Precision Mobile Workstations are usually assembled in Kunshan, Jiangsu, not in Shenzhen.😀

 

 

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, ZN_lucky said:

1. Do we have any info on when will models with DIMM and interposer be orderable?

 

Earlier @Dell-Mano_G answered this question with "summer time"...  Not sure if the situation with the 7X70's delayed launch has affected things but I would expect within the next ≈2 months.

 

————

 

I was thinking that FedEx might get my package over today and not tomorrow but it does not look like that is the case.  It did not move out of Chicago last night.  Dell did mark my order "shipped" about five hours after handing it over to FedEx.  I haven't been charged for the system yet, but I imagine that will sort itself out in short order...

 

So it looks like 17 days from "In production" to delivery in my case.  If Dell is going to hit these August 22ish dates for the bulk of people's orders, seems like we'll have to start seeing them enter production by the end of next week at the latest...

[operator]

2 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

If Dell is going to hit these August 22ish dates for the bulk of people's orders, seems like we'll have to start seeing them enter production by the end of next week at the latest...

 

I also calculated this just like you did and I am concerned they might throw in another delay...... But lets stay optimistic as long as possible. 🙂

 

My planned ship date did not change yet: Aug 9th

[Conan11]

4 hours ago, ZN_lucky said:

Does an OLED display have a "background light" refresh rate? (I know there is no background light, I mean how is dimming implemented in the hardware). Eg if someone is irritated by PWM'd backlight with non-OLED displayed, does OLED solve this? I mean are the individual LEDs brightness controlled by PWM also or is do the LEDs always stay on and the brightness is controlled by the current to each LED?

No details were provided. I think I haven't seen an OLED panel with no PWM, or even with high PWM frequency. Some OLED panels I saw have e.g. 240 Hz PWM, which may or may not be a problem, depending on a person.

 

If 240 Hz feels uncomfortable with an LCD panel, I wouldn't expect OLED to behave any better.

 

Some LCD panels use either no PWM or very high frequency PWM, but what DELL actually installs their laptops varies a lot, even for the same laptop models.

[operator]

On 6/7/2022 at 9:17 PM, Pultzar said:

Do you know what the PWM frequency is for the 7670 OLED panel?

 

On 6/7/2022 at 9:27 PM, Dell-Mano_G said:

I don't have the PWM freq for the OLED.  Sorry. I can look. 

 

On 7/14/2022 at 12:10 AM, operator said:

@Dell-Mano_G Do you have some PWM info at all for any of the screens in 7670/7770?

 

4 hours ago, Conan11 said:

No details were provided.

 

Already tried to find out, but was not very successful. 😉

[Conan11]

10 minutes ago, operator said:

Already tried to find out, but was not very successful. 😉

Yes, I appreciate. I guess if DELL had something to brag about, they would.

My hope/assumption is that in this kind of laptop they would install something of good quality, but presently available good quality might not be good enough for some people.

[win32asmguy]

55 minutes ago, Conan11 said:

Yes, I appreciate. I guess if DELL had something to brag about, they would.

My hope/assumption is that in this kind of laptop they would install something of good quality, but presently available good quality might not be good enough for some people.

I am not sure if it helps, but on the Thinkpad P16 it is advertised to have a similar spec OLED touch panel option with "DC Dimming" which usually implies no PWM.

[Conan11]

5 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

I am not sure if it helps, but on the Thinkpad P16 it is advertised to have a similar spec OLED touch panel option with "DC Dimming" which usually implies no PWM.

Actually, where did you find this information? This page: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/thinkpad-p16-(16-inch-intel)/len101t0041 says:

 

16.0″ WQUXGA (3840 x 2400) OLED, touchscreen, 400 nits, antireflective / antismudge, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, low blue light, DisplayHDR™ 500 True Black, Dolby Vision® HDR, X-Rite® Pantone® Factory Display Calibration

 

Lenovo indeed historically seems to take care not to use PWM, and with DELL it varies.
One more thing to consider is that some LCD panels use no PWM only down to certain brightness level, below which PWM kicks in. Do we know anything about OLEDs?

[win32asmguy]

18 minutes ago, Conan11 said:

Actually, where did you find this information? This page: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadp/thinkpad-p16-(16-inch-intel)/len101t0041 says:

 

16.0″ WQUXGA (3840 x 2400) OLED, touchscreen, 400 nits, antireflective / antismudge, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, low blue light, DisplayHDR™ 500 True Black, Dolby Vision® HDR, X-Rite® Pantone® Factory Display Calibration

 

Lenovo indeed historically seems to take care not to use PWM, and with DELL it varies.
One more thing to consider is that some LCD panels use no PWM only down to certain brightness level, below which PWM kicks in. Do we know anything about OLEDs?

https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_P16_Gen_1

 

On the specs page it has a section for the displays. In theory they are all only made by a single vendor so they should have the same characteristics. I do think the 15.6 inch WQHD 240hz OLED in the MSI ge67hx was reported to have PWM in the notebook check review.

[Aaron44126]

Almost 30 hours between the FedEx "picked up" scan and any further progress on the tracker...  I was getting a bit antsy, but as I understand it, if you select FedEx Express "two day" service then you will get your package in two days (they will go out of their way to not deliver it in one day).  Given the short distance, it probably would have been faster to use FedEx Ground.

 

Anyway.  It's at the sort facility in my metro area and I expect that it will be in the "out for delivery" step here in the next 2-3 hours.

 

[Edit] Credit card charge for the laptop came through overnight.

 

[Edit 2] (1.5 hours later) Package was scanned this morning at a FedEx facility about two miles away and is now marked out for delivery.

[__starrify__]

On 7/23/2022 at 2:00 PM, Victor said:

https://www.chiphell.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2431029

the very first brief review from China. 😄

FYI that the review has been updated yesterday with much further benchmark info. You may search for "2022.07.26 我又回来啦！" (without the quotes) on that page for new content.

 

The op observed that the's a 55-watt power limit on the GPU (the op has got 7770 + A3000). The op mentioned that the issue was reported to Dell.

Edited: To be precise, here the 55-watt limit happened during the op's dual-benchmark (CPU+GPU). The GPU alone may achieve higher power limit (115W?). Please see also @Aaron44126's post below. Sorry for any confusion.

> 接下来让我们进入AIDA64 Extreme的双烤环节，此时CPU功耗在85W左右，温度95℃，全核稳定在2.8GHz。GPU功耗55W左右，温度74℃。

> 对，就是GPU锁定在了55W上不去
> 目前此现象已上报给dell，希望在下一版BIOS中能解决。

Edited July 27, 2022 by __starrify__

[Aaron44126]

18 minutes ago, __starrify__ said:

FYI that the review has been updated yesterday with much further benchmark info.

 

@win32asmguy@AL123

This guy reports PL2 157W and PL1 85W.  A3000 has 115W TDP and boost power potentially up to 130W.

 

He does mention running the GPU at 115W for ten minutes before hitting the 55W limit later....?  Did the 55W GPU limit only pop up when he tried to load the CPU and GPU at the same time?

 

GPU单烤10分钟左右，可以看到其功耗稳定在115W，温度可以控制在75度以内，堪称表现良好。

The GPU is baked for about 10 minutes, and it can be seen that its power consumption is stable at 115W, and the temperature can be controlled within 75 degrees, which is a good performance.

 

He also mentions that the Windows installer can't see drives if the system is set to RAID mode, but I'm rather sure he just didn't try manually loading the RAID driver from the installer (I'll be trying this out later today hopefully).

[microdou]

51 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

He does mention running the GPU at 115W for ten minutes before hitting the 55W limit later

Is this throttling managed by Windows or BIOS? I wonder if the performance can be better in Linux 🤔

[Aaron44126]

Box is a little bit bigger than I envisioned...

 

 

 

Right now, just trying to capture an image of the included SSD before booting up Windows for the first time.  Can't do much more with it until later, after workday and household obligations are taken care of.  But I'll spin up an "owner's thread" and start digging in soon...

[Reciever]

12 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Box is a little bit bigger than I envisioned...

 

 

 

Right now, just trying to capture an image of the included SSD before booting up Windows for the first time.  Can't do much more with it until later, after workday and household obligations are taken care of.  But I'll spin up an "owner's thread" and start digging in soon...

When you do (likely already planned to) please link the threads together :)  

[Aaron44126]

On 7/12/2022 at 7:50 AM, David55 said:

Can you say here the part number for the 3080 Ti?

 

Here are all of the parts related to 3080 Ti.

[FabeFromBOD]

13 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Box is a little bit bigger than I envisioned...

 

 

 

Right now, just trying to capture an image of the included SSD before booting up Windows for the first time.  Can't do much more with it until later, after workday and household obligations are taken care of.  But I'll spin up an "owner's thread" and start digging in soon...

 

Hi @Aaron44126, what would you recommend as an SSD to replace the original one ?

 

[Aaron44126]

3 hours ago, FabeFromBOD said:

Hi @Aaron44126, what would you recommend as an SSD to replace the original one ?

 

Samsung 980 Pro if capacity 2TB or less is good with you.  (Samsung 970 EVO Plus, if you want to save some money and don't need PCIe4 speed.)  There is some discussion on the last few pages of this thread about options for high capacity drives (4TB and 8TB).

 

I went with Samsung 980 Pro 2TB for my system/Windows drive, and Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus for data drives because it is the only TLC/PCIe4 8TB drive available right now.

 

————

 

7770 is working fine so far.  I am still in the setup stage.  I have installed the NVMe drives that I bought for it, migrated my old Win10 install over and gotten all of the drivers situated, and now I am working on migrating stuff from my data drives (probably about five hours for that data transfer once I kick it off).  Still haven't had time to actually "check it out" other than that.

[win32asmguy]

On 7/27/2022 at 8:54 AM, Aaron44126 said:

@win32asmguy@AL123

This guy reports PL2 157W and PL1 85W.  A3000 has 115W TDP and boost power potentially up to 130W.

 

He does mention running the GPU at 115W for ten minutes before hitting the 55W limit later....?  Did the 55W GPU limit only pop up when he tried to load the CPU and GPU at the same time?

 

GPU单烤10分钟左右，可以看到其功耗稳定在115W，温度可以控制在75度以内，堪称表现良好。

The GPU is baked for about 10 minutes, and it can be seen that its power consumption is stable at 115W, and the temperature can be controlled within 75 degrees, which is a good performance.

 

He also mentions that the Windows installer can't see drives if the system is set to RAID mode, but I'm rather sure he just didn't try manually loading the RAID driver from the installer (I'll be trying this out later today hopefully).

Yep, it will be interesting to see how it compares with the gaming-focused HX laptops already out and the other workstation HX laptops.

 

By chance do you have access to a TB4 device so we can get a topology report for the system via HWiNFO64? I am just curious if its PCIe lanes are via the CPU or PCH, similar to this:

 

[Aaron44126]

37 minutes ago, win32asmguy said:

By chance do you have access to a TB4 device so we can get a topology report for the system via HWiNFO64?

 

I do have a TB18DC dock lying around that I could try.  Should be able to tell whether it is through the PCH or not by where the ASMedia USB controller shows up in the topology.

 

[Edit]

Just confirmed that the GPU is just connected at PCIe4 ×8 (just like Precision 7X60).

[Aaron44126]

51 minutes ago, win32asmguy said:

I am just curious if its PCIe lanes are via the CPU or PCH

 

It's not Thunderbolt, but I just noticed this.

 

Spoiler

 

Flash drive is plugged into left-side USB-A port.  Samsung SSD is plugged into left-side USB-C port (which is also a Thunderbolt port).  The ports are right next to each other, but attached to different USB controllers.  I also have a drive labeled "Sabrent SCSI Disk Device", visible above, which is plugged into the right-side USB-C port and it attaches to the same USB controller as the left-side USB-A port.

[Aaron44126]

The 120Hz display panel appears to support variable refresh rate!  Going to have to mess with this, too...

 

I wondered if it might be the same panel as the recent Alienware 17 (AMD) systems that support VRR on a 4K/120Hz panel.  @Dell-Mano_G mentioned that he thought they were using the same panel in the 7770.

 

(I don't think it supports G-SYNC, so you have to use it through the Intel GPU + Optimus as described here.  I'll try later and see if I can enable G-SYNC or not.)

[wallstreetbets]

i have to say, the precision 7670 looks quite ugly. but aesthetics isnt the reason for buying this 🤭

 

im hoping the older models are still available for cyber monday sales. i see the precision 5760 is 50% off, hopefully they do a clearance sale then.

[win32asmguy]

On 7/24/2022 at 11:44 AM, 1610ftw said:

I also doubt we will ever be at 100% but it would be nice if with for example a 3080 Ti mobile and a 3080 Ti eGPU we would get at least halfway in the direction of the desktop card. From what I saw last year of a laptop 3060 and 3080 vs their eGHPU counterparts they were both slower than what could be achieved in a Clevo X170 and that wasn't so great.

Here is a Timespy benchmark of a 3080 Ti desktop card inside a Razer Core X eGPU connected via TB4 to the Precision 7560:

 

https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/77926408?

 

The other eGPU option is the ADT-Link R43SG 4.0 which can plug in through the bottom cover SSD door to the Gen4 M.2 slot and gives you the full 64Gbps. It is not as convenient as TB4 and you lose a M.2 storage slot but definitely the best option for bandwidth and latency.

 

It will be great when we get a GPU benchmark result from @Aaron44126 so we can see how the internal Precision 7760 3080 Ti compares. It always is a trade off of convenience / power / price.