Precision 7760 heavily discounted now

[kors]

Hi all,

 

Browsing dell.com I see that they're offering 35% discounts on the 7760 right now. I was thinking of waiting on a 7770, but when I put together a 7760 configuration, the discount saved me almost $2000.

 

I've never purchased a machine from Dell when it just dropped, so not sure what kind of discounts to expect, but I'm guessing it won't be much.

 

Points that I'm mulling over that argue in favor of the 7760 are the discount (obviously), the fact that it has real buttons for the track pad, possible performance issues with the mixed P/E cores on the new chips.

 

Chime in and let me know if you think it's still worth waiting for the 7770 and why.

 

Thanks!

[Aaron44126]

The original launch price for the base Precision 7760 (no upgrades) last year was $1,809 USD.  It actually costs more now, at $2,029.

 

The discount presented on Dell's web site is rather misleading.  The systems are always shown as discounted by 30% or so.  Look at the Precision 3470 or Precision 5770 (systems that just launched... 3470 was yesterday!).

 

The built-in discount serves multiple purposes.  It makes it look like you're getting a good deal all of the time.  (Better jump on that while it's available!)  It also means that a coupon that offers, say, 35% off won't save you as much as it seems, because it will just replace and not stack against the built-in 30ish% discount.

 

For the best price, you can look at coupon sites for Dell business coupons and see if you can find one that beats the "built-in" discount.  But the best thing to do is phone up a sales rep.  They're usually able to beat the web price by a little bit, even if there are other coupons/promos active.

 

...

I've been ready to replace my Precision M6700 (personal system nearing 10 years old) for a couple of years now, but I've held off specifically waiting for the Alder Lake hybrid architecture.  (Mostly, it's just really interesting to me.  I plan for this system to be long-lived and I didn't want to miss this by just one or two years.)  Benchmarks show a ≈60% performance boost over Tiger Lake in multi-threaded loads.  (That's way higher than the typical year-over-year gain that we've been getting from Intel lately.)  That's with Alder Lake H, not Alder Lake HX, to boot.  Also, booting background tasks to the E cores should save power / battery life / heat / noise all around.

 

The main issue with Alder Lake is low priority threads that do actual work getting "inadvertently" assigned to E cores.  Video encoding jobs seem to be a good example of this.  It can also apply to running VMs, compiling software, and other things that do real computing work in processes other than the active/focused one.  Software will be updated in due course to account for this, but in the meantime, as long as you are aware of the potential issues then you can make adjustments to bump processes that need the extra performance over to the P cores.

 

There was some good discussion on this in earlier pages of the Precision 7X70 pre-release thread.  Here you can see how "bad" performance can be in a case like this.  This article is interesting and has some information on workarounds, and I think that @AL123 can weigh in, he's had the chance to do some Alder Lake testing already.  I'm planning to use Process Lasso to help manage pinning certain processes to certain types of cores.

 

Windows 11 handles this better than Windows 10, but still has some pitfalls.  Though, it's quite possible that your software workload won't be running low priority or out-of-band compute jobs, and this won't be an issue for you at all.

 

We will have to see what pricing is like for the GPUs to see how much of an upgrade that will be.  I'm not expecting RTX A5500 and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti to be a significant upgrade over their predecessors, due to power constraints... maybe we will see a 10-15% gain from them in ideal circumstances.  (Next year's Lovelace GPUs will do way better than this.)  RTX A4500 could be a really good deal, though, if it is priced around the same as the RTX A4000 in the Precision 7X60 (it has double the vRAM, and a CUDA core count close to that of the RTX A5000).

 

I would say to wait until the Precision 7770 launch before deciding what to do, since we are so close to the launch window (perhaps 1-3 weeks).  Precision 7760 will still be available for some weeks after 7770 launches and then you will be able to do a direct price comparison.  (Maybe 7760 will even get a little bit cheaper as they try to clear out inventory.)

[kors]

Thanks so much Aaron for the amazingly comprehensive response!

 

I didn't realize that was how things worked on Dell's site. I come from using mostly ThinkPads and zbooks, so this will be my first dell.

 

Given all the info you presented, I will definitely hold tight until the 7770 drops. Thats awesome you're still rocking the 6700- I've always loved that chassis, especially in Covet trim. I'm running an old W520 and z620 desktop so im about due for a refresh as well. With the performance  gains you mention, I think I can live without the track pad buttons although I will miss the track point🙂

 

So glad i came across this new forum. Now that  notebook review is closed, I'll be sure and keep an eye out over here.

 

Cheers!

[Aaron44126]

10 hours ago, kors said:

although I will miss the track point🙂

 

Track point is also missing from 7760 (and 7750).

 

The way that Dell handles pricing is a long-time obnoxious thing about them.  Pretty sure it's been like this the whole time that I've been using them (20+ years).  You never know what anything really costs, exactly...  Also, the web prices fluctuate (for both the base system and the various upgrades you can do), changing a bit every week or two.

[kors]

11 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

Track point is also missing from 7760 (and 7750).

 

The way that Dell handles pricing is a long-time obnoxious thing about them.  Pretty sure it's been like this the whole time that I've been using them (20+ years).  You never know what anything really costs, exactly...  Also, the web prices fluctuate (for both the base system and the various upgrades you can do), changing a bit every week or two.

Yeah, I remember it's been a couple models since they did away with it. I figure I'll just have to get a small wireless mouse to carry around.

 

That sounds crazy how they do the pricing. I got the name of one of their sales engineers from a colleague, so I figure I'll take your advice and just call him and see what kind of deals I can get.

[kors]

Update: I talked to a sales rep at Dell yesterday and still no ETA for the 7770. Current discount that I could get on a 7760 was %30- down 5% from the 35% they were offering online when I created the thread. Looking at their site today, I see you can get a loaded XPS 17 with a 12th gen i9 for $2799 on their summer sale, so I'm tempted to try one of those instead.

[Aaron44126]

Working ETA for ordering 7X70 right now is June 7.

[kors]

7 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Working ETA for ordering 7X70 right now is June 7.

Oh wow! The rep that I spoke to must not have known that. Do you have a good rep that you've worked with that I can contact?

[Aaron44126]

3 hours ago, kors said:

Oh wow! The rep that I spoke to must not have known that. Do you have a good rep that you've worked with that I can contact?

This information came from a Chinese rep (they seem to be a bit more loose about what they give out).  It is not confirmed, plans can change up until the last minute.  The launch will be global when it happens.

[Aaron44126]

3 hours ago, kors said:

I see you can get a loaded XPS 17 with a 12th gen i9 for $2799 on their summer sale, so I'm tempted to try one of those instead.

 

Does seem like a good deal; I just spec'ed out a similar Precision 5770 and it ended up at a bit over $4,000.  (XPS 17 and Precision 57X0 are basically the same, other than the GPU options — they have the same chassis, same cooling system, same display, same battery, same BIOS even.)  Plus there is the fact that you can order the XPS and have it in less than two weeks.  When Precision 7X70 launches, I'd bet Dell will be showing an ≈8 week estimated turnaround, but a lot of people will start receiving theirs "early" at 5-6 weeks.

 

XPS / Precision 5XXX is a no-go for me... no numeric keypad, only two NVMe slots, etc..  I intend for this to be a very long-lived system so I am less concerned about the cost.  (My M6700 has lasted me for just about ten years.)  Everything is a tradeoff.  Got to decide what is worth it for you.

[kors]

Yesterday I emailed the rep I spoke with before and he confirmed the 7th. The XPS $2799 sale is gone from the website, so guess I'm gonna be waiting for the 7th with you.

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, kors said:

Yesterday I emailed the rep I spoke with before and he confirmed the 7th. The XPS $2799 sale is gone from the website, so guess I'm gonna be waiting for the 7th with you.

 

Reps will typically beat the web price if you place an order through them.  If there was a deal available yesterday / last week / etc. that is not showing on the web anymore, you still might be able to get a similar price through a rep, especially if you can be specific with regards to what was available.  (General frustration that I have with Dell as I mentioned before.  You don't know what anything "really" costs.)

 

I will also mention... this happened to a few people last year in the weeks following the 7X60 release.  If you buy a system, and a cheaper deal for the same system comes along soon after (i.e. while you are waiting to receive it), you can go through customer service and have them credit you the difference.

 

 

[Edit] Thanks for the note about the 7th confirmation from your rep.

...If the 7th launch is happening, we should have some indications late in the day on Monday the 6th (...support site with manuals and drivers goes live, system goes on sale in China / Asia markets first, etc.).

[kors]

Yeah I tried to see if the rep would still give me the discounted price of $2799 but no joy- probably will try a different rep next time. Yeah I'm hoping we see the 7770 drop tonight. I don't see anything as of yet.

[Aaron44126]

Got tired of waiting, went and asked a chat rep if there was any new information on availability.  The guy came back and said even though it is not posted on the web site yet, he can put a quote together and I can order it through the quote.  Working on the quote right now.  I might be ordering it.  I'll post back in a few minutes 🙂

 

[Edit]

To avoid double-posting, see discussion in the 7X70 thread.

[kors]

Went to see if the 7760s got any increase in discount and strangely *all* configurations are showing as "temporarily of stock"

[Aaron44126]

34 minutes ago, kors said:

Went to see if the 7760s got any increase in discount and strangely *all* configurations are showing as "temporarily of stock"

Huh.  Are you in the US market?  It still acts like I can order from here.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-notebooks/precision-7760-workstation/spd/precision-17-7760-laptop#configurations_section

[kors]

Yeah, I am. OK they must have remedied the issue.

[kors]

Just checked again and I'm still seeing them as being out of stock.

[Aaron44126]

6 hours ago, kors said:

Just checked again and I'm still seeing them as being out of stock.

 

Very strange.  For me it only shows one of the three options out of stock.

 

You should always start with configuring the cheapest/base model (starting with a higher one doesn't save you any money — if you configure the base one the same, the price will be the same).  That is, unless you need the system to arrive more quickly, sometimes they have limited/preconfigured ones that can ship out faster.

 

That said, it's a hassle but I always order through a sales rep.  They should be able to do better than the web price.  You could decide what specs you're interested in and send it to a sales rep for a quote.  7760 should be orderable for a while yet, though some spec options may become available as they wind down inventory.  Also based on my experience ordering the 7770, I don't think 7760 is going to be much cheaper.

 

One other thing you could check is Dell Outlet.  They put overstocks/refurbished machines on sale there.  Configuration might be more limited but systems ordered through the outlet have the same full warranty coverage as systems ordered normally.  Precision 7000 systems get 3-year NBD service by "default".

[kors]

When you drill down into the ones that don't show as out of stock, all cpu configs that they present are marked as out of stock :(

 

I'll ask the rep about them when I talk to him today.

[Aaron44126]

When my Precision 7770 order was delayed(/canceled?) yesterday, my rep mentioned that they have Precision 7760 available still ("in case I have a business emergency") so that is not off the table even if the web site is not being cooperative.

 

Multiple Dell sources have put June 16 as the new (tentative) 7770 order date.