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

[1610ftw]

6 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

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.

That is at the upper end of performance that one can get with a laptop 3080 Ti so it is a good option for a laptop with limited cooling capability and a unified heatsink that can then deal with only the CPU - excellent choice for the Dell workstations.

 

I wonder what could be achieved with the other solution that taps into the PCI-E connector. I have been meaning to check it out with one of the laptops that I have here but never got around to it as it seemed like a rather clumsy contraption and I do not need that much GPU performance myself.

 

 

 

[win32asmguy]

14 minutes ago, 1610ftw said:

That is at the upper end of performance that one can get with a laptop 3080 Ti so it is a good option for a laptop with limited cooling capability and a unified heatsink that can then deal with only the CPU - excellent choice for the Dell workstations.

 

I wonder what could be achieved with the other solution that taps into the PCI-E connector. I have been meaning to check it out with one of the laptops that I have here but never got around to it as it seemed like a rather clumsy contraption and I do not need that much GPU performance myself.

It can be very good. Here is a review of a Precision 7760 and desktop 6800 XT via that adapter:

 

https://egpu.io/forums/builds/2021-17-dell-precision-7760-rtx-a4000-11th8ch-rx6800xt-64gbps-m-2-adt-link-r43sg-4-0-win11/

 

He could have also used a 3080Ti but getting the Quadro dGPU working with a Geforce eGPU has driver conflicts. It would be better to have chosen the laptop 3080 gpu option or just no dedicated gpu at all from Dell's choices.

[Pultzar]

Aaron, have you run Cinebench R23 yet?

[Aaron44126]

5 minutes ago, Pultzar said:

Aaron, have you run Cinebench R23 yet?

 

Not yet.  I will run a few benchmarks and kick off the "owner's thread" with some photos, numbers, and first impressions this evening.

[FabeFromBOD]

On 7/28/2022 at 1:47 PM, Aaron44126 said:

 

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.

 

👍👍👍👍

[operator]

On 7/29/2022 at 6:04 PM, Aaron44126 said:

I will run a few benchmarks and kick off the "owner's thread" with some photos, numbers, and first impressions this evening

 

@Aaron44126 did you already get a chance to do some testing?

Would be very interesting to see some fresh pictures/benchmarks. 🙂

 

My order is still "stuck" with status "confirmed". Anyone whose order is already on its way?

[Aaron44126]

1 minute ago, operator said:

@Aaron44126 did you already get a chance to do some testing?

Would be very interesting to see some fresh pictures/benchmarks. 🙂

 

See owner's thread.

[operator]

2 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

See owner's thread.

 

My bad. Seems I missed it. 

[microdou]

34 minutes ago, operator said:

My order is still "stuck" with status "confirmed"

Mine the same 😭

[operator]

Since I was curious about if the proposed ship date (Aug 9th) will be met, I called Dell Order department to ask them about the status.

That was a very interesting call. The guy said, it seems like for my workstation, they are waiting for the SSD to start building. They have about 50 in stock but since the SSDs are used in many Dell models and they handle it by "first in first out" - I am not on top of the queue to get one of these 50. They will get another 200 by Thursday and I should be able to get one of these. They said build is scheduled to be on Aug 7th (not sure if this is proposed start or complete date), which is a sunday.... and shipping on Aug 9th is still realistic, he said. But of course it cannot be guaranteed.

 

He also mentioned that after the build is finished in China, I won't be able to see any updates in tracking, once the parcel hits Europe and went through customs.

So I am still carefully optimistic that Aug 22 as delivery date is still achievable.

 

[Tommi14]

On 7/14/2022 at 1:10 AM, operator said:

 

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

 

Thanks

 

@Dell-Mano_G Could you please provide info about PWM possible used in any of the screens in 7670 or 7770?

[Aaron44126]

On 8/2/2022 at 5:37 AM, operator said:

They have about 50 in stock but since the SSDs are used in many Dell models and they handle it by "first in first out" - I am not on top of the queue to get one of these 50.

 

Did you get the cheapest SSD, 256GB?

.....Did most everyone else?  I wonder if getting the 512GB instead is part of the reason that my system came early.

[CZabel]

Interesting note on the SSD being the bottleneck. For what it's worth, I got the 1TB drive and have a delivery window of 26th-31st. And yes I know Dell SSDs are expensive, but I'm not paying for this, and my company wants that sweet sweet warranty coverage. Honestly, after my recent experience with with Lenovo's P17Gen2 I'm very interested in having that warranty as well. 

[operator]

2 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Did you get the cheapest SSD, 256GB?

 

512 GB SED, maybe that is the reason for the delay.

...or maybe not the delay, but the reason for not preponing my delivery and shipping date. 🙂

[Ionising_Radiation]

16 hours ago, Tommi14 said:

Could you please provide info about PWM possible used in any of the screens in 7670 or 7770?

In case this is not answered by Mano, all buyers of 7X70 can perform their own tests fairly straightforwardly.

Start from the lowest display brightness, and wave your hand in front of the display; if you see a stroboscopic effect, then the PWM frequency is low enough to affect eyesight and comfort. Generally the PWM frequency/duty cycle increases with increasing brightness, and most displays are at 100% duty cycle on 100% brightness. 

 

By manufacturer, I've found that BOE is the worst offender, and AUO and LG almost never use PWM; Chi Mei does use it sometimes (my old Clevo W230SS with a 13" N133HSE panel had PWM; the current panel in my Precision is also by CMN, but no (detectable) PWM). 

 

I am betting that the OLED display almost certainly uses PWM, and the IPS LCD ones may not.

[Aaron44126]

7 hours ago, Ionising_Radiation said:

Start from the lowest display brightness, and wave your hand in front of the display; if you see a stroboscopic effect, then the PWM frequency is low enough to affect eyesight and comfort. Generally the PWM frequency/duty cycle increases with increasing brightness, and most displays are at 100% duty cycle on 100% brightness.

 

I'm not able to discern any "stroboscopic effect" waving my hand in front of the 7770 (4K/120Hz) panel at low brightness.

 

I checked with MonInfo; looks like it is an AUO panel.

 

(Seems like it wouldn't be that hard to make an OLED panel without PWM since it doesn't even have a backlight... but I've seen stories of OLED panels that do have it and I'm thinking that you probably know the situation better than me.  We'll see once someone actually gets one.)

[Ionising_Radiation]

15 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Seems like it wouldn't be that hard to make an OLED panel without PWM since it doesn't even have a backlight... but I've seen stories of OLED panels that do have it and I'm thinking that you probably know the situation better than me.

Oh, I don't claim to be an expert on OLED—just that pretty much every OLED display I've seen uses PWM brightness control, ergo my expectations for the 7670 OLED panel.

 

My phone (Sony Xperia 5iii)

My family's phones (iPhone 12 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S21, Samsung Galaxy Note 8)

Our TV (LG G1 55")

 

All OLED, all have flickering. It just happens to be that PWM is the most straightforward way to control brightness, I can't really say with certainty why they don't use DC brightness dimming. 

[terrato]

On 8/4/2022 at 6:00 AM, operator said:

 

512 GB SED, maybe that is the reason for the delay.

...or maybe not the delay, but the reason for not preponing my delivery and shipping date. 🙂

Has your order status been udpated? My 7670 order is still in Confirmed status since Jul 8th. BTW, I ordered with 1T SSD disk.

[Conan11]

On 8/4/2022 at 9:05 PM, Ionising_Radiation said:

Oh, I don't claim to be an expert on OLED—just that pretty much every OLED display I've seen uses PWM brightness control, ergo my expectations for the 7670 OLED panel.

Yeah, I'm also afraid that these Lenovo specs are just a copy/paste mistake...

[operator]

4 hours ago, terrato said:

Has your order status been udpated? My 7670 order is still in Confirmed status since Jul 8th. BTW, I ordered with 1T SSD disk.

 

Nothing changed yet. 😞

The proposed shipping date is still showing for tomorrow, so I will call DELL tomorrow to get an actual status....

[operator]

I called Dell and they said that since Aug 7th (Sunday) the system is in pre-production state. Whatever that means. It seems that there is still an issue with some of the hardware parts. The Dell agent opened up a case internally to get more information. Estimated delivery is still showing up as Aug 22nd.

 

After some hours I got note that the missing parts (plural!) shall be back in stock around Aug 20th. 🤬

They will contact me with additional information, I will update it here.

 

@terrato @microdou Did you already contact DELL to ask about your current status?

[TheVlad]

Hi all.

 

Does 7770 come with an option to have access to M.2 slots via separate door/compartment, or do we have to take out entire backplate in order to access it?

 

Does removing the backplate to install SSD voids Warranty? As far as I know, this should be illegal in the EU?

Are there any anti-tamper triggers?

Thanks for letting me know 😉 !

[operator]

1 hour ago, TheVlad said:

Hi all.

 

Does 7770 come with an option to have access to M.2 slots via separate door/compartment, or do we have to take out entire backplate in order to access it?

 

Does removing the backplate to install SSD voids Warranty? As far as I know, this should be illegal in the EU?

Are there any anti-tamper triggers?

Thanks for letting me know 😉 !

 

According to the pictures you can access the System SSD #1 if you have configured the SSD door. If not, you have to open up the case to get to it like you have to do when you want to access the other SSD slots #2-#4.

It does not void warranty.

The specs say that the systems have a device tampering detection.

 

[Aaron44126]

Tamper protection just shows a warning in the BIOS to inform you that the case has been opened.  You can install whatever SSDs you want without voiding the warranty.  But, Dell has the option to require that you put the system in its original configuration before performing warranty service.

[terrato]

The status of mine has been changed to "In-Production". Maybe there are more 1T SSD disks in stock？