Precision 7680 / Precision 7780 pre-release discussion (Raptor Lake, 2023)

[Aaron44126]

 

UPDATE — Systems are available to order as of March 23, 2023.

 

Here is what we are looking at for the next-gen Precision systems.

• CPU — Intel 13th-gen "Raptor Lake" HX (i9-13950HX, i7-13850HX, i5-13600HX)
  • Intel 7 process (10nm) — Same as Alder Lake
  • 55W base TDP
  • 8P+16E configuration at the top
  • Modest improvement over Alder Lake, though the extra E cores could give a performance boost of perhaps around 20% in multi-threaded workloads
    
• GPU — NVIDIA "Ada Lovelace" mobile workstation GPUs
  • The top card is "NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation Laptop GPU" (what a mouthful)
  • TSMC 4N process (5nm)
  • 
  • The GPUs on offer are A1000 6GB, 2000 Ada, 3500 Ada, 4000 Ada, and 5000 Ada.
  • GeForce RTX 4090 is also available — depending on your region, you might have to go through a sales rep to order a system with the GeForce GPU as the option will not be available from the web site.
• DDR5 support, up to 128GB, CAMM
  • 128GB option requires a CAMM module
  • ECC options require SODIMM modules (64GB max)
• PCIe4 support for both dGPU and NVMe drives
  • PCIe5 support is possible; Raptor Lake does have some PCIe5 lanes available, but it may not be implemented as Ada Lovelace uses only PCIe4 and the market for PCIe5 NVMe SSDs isn't quite there yet.
• Same chassis and cooling setup as Precision 7670/7770.
• Available to order as of March 23, 2023.

 

Full Raptor Lake Precision lineup:

• Precision 3480
• Precision 3580
• Precision 3581
• Precision 5480 — Available May 18
• Precision 5680 — Available May 18
• Precision 7680
• Precision 7780

[Reciever]

I wonder how many people will move off of the 7770 to the 7780?

[serpro69]

Hmm, probably not many, it's expensive as heck to switch to a new generation every year

I'll probably try my luck with the 7780 though. Been eyeing 7770 since around this time last year, but decided that I don't want to wait and got a 7560 which was later returned. Didn't bother with a replacement and decided to wait for 7770 after all.

When 7x70 series appeared, my sales rep gave me a quote and went on vacation; 3 months later I still haven't heard back  At this point I'm not going to bother with 7770 - what a disappointment it is.

 

I'm kind of skeptical that Dell will address the issues with the current gen in the next one (Not that there are any worthy alternatives in this laptop segment, which is why they will probably get away with it.) But what the heck, let the waiting game begin continue...

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, Reciever said:

I wonder how many people will move off of the 7770 to the 7780?

39 minutes ago, serpro69 said:

Hmm, probably not many

 

I agree with @serpro69...

 

There are a lot of people complaining about the Precision 7770 thermals, and the system had a rocky launch, at least among the techy-sorts of people who come to visit a forum like this and expect peak performance from such a system.  (Not to mention the manufacturing issues that led to many delayed orders.)  But, when the Precision 7770 launched you can bet that they were already a just few months away from finalizing many components of the Precision 7780, so even if they are paying attention to this feedback, they're not going to have time to make any big changes to address it.  (Case in point — leaked chassis parts for Precision 7770, spotted in March, had September/October 2021 build dates stamped on them.  Precision 7770 didn't launch until July 2022.)  Also, Precision 7780 is likely to share a chassis with the Precision 7770 — though, the heatsink/cooler could be tweaked for the better.

 

Dell's system design-to-launch process lasts about two years, so the 2024 Precision systems (Meteor Lake?) might be early enough in the process to take some of this feedback into account.

 

It remains to be seen how much they care about our complaints — if they can sell them in bulk to big businesses regardless of whether or not people like us think that the performance is up to par.  And also as @serpro69 alluded, Precision 7770 has essentially no competition in its class, so what are you gonna do?  (But, I know that there is some Dell observation of the Precision 7X70 threads on this forum going on.....)

[serpro69]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

It remains to be seen how much they care about our complaints — if they can sell them in bulk to big businesses regardless of whether or not people like us think that the performance is up to par. 

 

THIS.

Businesses don't care. Or well, maybe they care, but most of "them" won't even find out there is an issue. How many "business users" will try to push these machines to their limits and/or try to resolve the problems? And we here don't represent even a speck of Dell's total sales. With all the problems 7x70 has, it's still an "improvement" over the last gen (albeit not an improvement we expected) and more importantly - it's a stable system with great warranty and support, which is what most businesses want in the end IMO. This and considering there's almost no competition - and Dell has very little incentive to make things better.

 

Plus, as you mentioned , things are probably already past their design phase. Raptor Lake also seems like a "so-so" improvement over Alder Lake. GPU... real-life improvements might not be that big either - again all comes down to thermals and available power supply, which I'm very certain that both will remain same as this year. So next year only kinda looks promising on paper IMO. Definitely not something to look forward to eagerly and hence why I think there will be little sense to swap 7x70 for 7x80.

[Aaron44126]

38 minutes ago, serpro69 said:

GPU... real-life improvements might not be that big either - again all comes down to thermals and available power supply, which I'm very certain that both will remain same as this year.

 

I think the GPU will be the most interesting thing with this generation.  It probably won't be "twice as fast" but even with the same power/thermal constraints, a node shrink means that you can get more work done with the same amount of power(/heat), so a non-trivial improvement is a pretty sure thing.  (How much, exactly, remains to be seen... but it'll definitely be more than A5000→A5500.)  Also, for those into gaming, DLSS 3 is super interesting and offers the opportunity to (nearly?) double the framerate in supported games.

 

The CPU upgrade looks kind of "meh" as you said.  (Maybe this is why Intel launched 13th gen with a press release rather than a full video presentation.)  But, Dell might also have a surprise in there for us.  (Past unexpected "nice surprise" examples would be things like the aluminum back display enclosure for Precision 7740, or the 120 Hz 4K display panel in the Precision 7760.)

[MyPC8MyBrain]

if my next endeavor with the 7770 wont stick i will be looking at one of these when they come out,

[rahasyavadi]

15 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

But, Dell might also have a surprise in there for us.  (Past unexpected "nice surprise" examples would be things like the aluminum back display enclosure for Precision 7740, or the 120 Hz 4K display panel in the Precision 7760.)

 

Probably the best unexpected nice surprise for me would be Dell fitting 17" 1920x1200 and 3840x2400 screens (16:10) into the 7780, which, as we discussed when the 7770 was about to be fully revealed, probably would be workable.

[Aaron44126]

19 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

I think the GPU will be the most interesting thing with this generation.

 

Here's an article getting into the weeds on Ada Lovelace performance, vs. Ampere and RDNA2.

https://chipsandcheese.com/2022/11/02/microbenchmarking-nvidias-rtx-4090/

[1610ftw]

19 hours ago, rahasyavadi said:

 

Probably the best unexpected nice surprise for me would be Dell fitting 17" 1920x1200 and 3840x2400 screens (16:10) into the 7780, which, as we discussed when the 7770 was about to be fully revealed, probably would be workable.

 

There is a new 18" screen around from what it seems and even that would fit so 17" would be easy:

https://www.panelook.com/N180JME-GAA_Innolux_18_LCM_overview_55484.html

https://www.panelook.com/N180GME-GAA_Innolux_18_LCM_overview_55483.html

 

As much as I like 18" and I would most probably buy a laptop with that screen or a bigger one it is unlikely that it will appear in the Dell workstation as long as there is only one resolution available. Dell likes to offer more than one resolution in their workstation and 17" 16:10 would be a better choice as they could offer 1920 x 1200, 2560 x 1600 and 3840 x 2400 screens.

[1610ftw]

On 11/1/2022 at 9:13 PM, Aaron44126 said:

 

I think the GPU will be the most interesting thing with this generation.  It probably won't be "twice as fast" but even with the same power/thermal constraints, a node shrink means that you can get more work done with the same amount of power(/heat), so a non-trivial improvement is a pretty sure thing.  (How much, exactly, remains to be seen... but it'll definitely be more than A5000→A5500.)  Also, for those into gaming, DLSS 3 is super interesting and offers the opportunity to (nearly?) double the framerate in supported games.

 

At the same 175W power limit that Nvidia seemingly intends to keep I would assume a ca. 20 to 35% increase depending on which desktop chip Nvidia chooses to castrate for mobile use.

 

 

On 11/1/2022 at 9:13 PM, Aaron44126 said:

The CPU upgrade looks kind of "meh" as you said.  (Maybe this is why Intel launched 13th gen with a press release rather than a full video presentation.)  But, Dell might also have a surprise in there for us.  (Past unexpected "nice surprise" examples would be things like the aluminum back display enclosure for Precision 7740, or the 120 Hz 4K display panel in the Precision 7760.)

 

I think the top CPU is also interesting as it will allow for much higher multicore performance at the same power level. Performance increases will be substantial for the 13900HX when running between 80 and 125W which I would consider entirely reaiistic in a properly designed laptop.

 

But to make use of all of this the most interesting thing about the next generation will hopefully be the improved thermal design and increased power limits that could come with it. A vapor chamber solution for the top of the line 7780 and a bigger power supply would show us that Dell means business.

 

When I recently checked out the MSI GT77 with the 12800HX and the 3070 Ti the power draw went up to almost 270W and with potentially beefier hardware 230W just won't cut it anymore so there should be a bigger power supply, too. The timing is also pretty good as with GaN power supplies we will be able to say goodbye to those 3 pound 330W power bricks that we are still seeing this generation.

 

 

 

[Antonius]

On 11/1/2022 at 1:50 PM, Aaron44126 said:

 

I agree with @serpro69...

 

There are a lot of people complaining about the Precision 7770 thermals, and the system had a rocky launch, at least among the techy-sorts of people who come to visit a forum like this and expect peak performance from such a system.  (Not to mention the manufacturing issues that led to many delayed orders.)  But, when the Precision 7770 launched you can bet that they were already a just few months away from finalizing many components of the Precision 7780, so even if they are paying attention to this feedback, they're not going to have time to make any big changes to address it.  (Case in point — leaked chassis parts for Precision 7770, spotted in March, had September/October 2021 build dates stamped on them.  Precision 7770 didn't launch until July 2022.)  Also, Precision 7780 is likely to share a chassis with the Precision 7770 — though, the heatsink/cooler could be tweaked for the better.

 

Dell's system design-to-launch process lasts about two years, so the 2024 Precision systems (Meteor Lake?) might be early enough in the process to take some of this feedback into account.

 

It remains to be seen how much they care about our complaints — if they can sell them in bulk to big businesses regardless of whether or not people like us think that the performance is up to par.  And also as @serpro69 alluded, Precision 7770 has essentially no competition in its class, so what are you gonna do?  (But, I know that there is some Dell observation of the Precision 7X70 threads on this forum going on.....)

How would you say that the 7770 thermals compare to the 7760? I got my 7760 a week after launch, and haven't really been up to date with precision stuff ever since.

One of my biggest reasons for not wanting to upgrade is because of the removal of physical left/middle/right click buttons, a couple of keyboard layout changes from around the 7750 where already bad enough (no dedicated pg up/down keys, keyboard light fn key being moved to F5 key, when F5 used to be standalone, perfect for refreshing browsers) I've tried the all touchpad laptops at work, really didn't like them. I'll take physical buttons any day, or at least the option for people to choose, but I doubt that Dell would do that.

[Aaron44126]

7 minutes ago, Caesar said:

How would you say that the 7770 thermals compare to the 7760? I got my 7760 a week after launch, and haven't really been up to date with precision stuff ever since.

One of my biggest reasons for not wanting to upgrade is because of the removal of physical left/middle/right click buttons, a couple of keyboard layout changes from around the 7750 where already bad enough (no dedicated pg up/down keys, keyboard light fn key being moved to F5 key, when F5 used to be standalone, perfect for refreshing browsers) I've tried the all touchpad laptops at work, really didn't like them. I'll take physical buttons any day, or at least the option for people to choose, but I doubt that Dell would do that.

 

People are generally disappointed with the thermals in the 7770.  You can check the 7X70 owner's thread and see the steps that people are taking to improve them (I summarized it somewhat in the OP).  That said, stock Precision 7770 does perform better than stock Precision 7760...  You can just give it an easy CPU performance boost of 20-30% with a little bit of work (and even more if you are willing to get into the weeds), so it'd be nice if Dell took some of the easy stuff and just made that the way things are for systems coming out of the factory...

[win32asmguy]

2 hours ago, Caesar said:

How would you say that the 7770 thermals compare to the 7760? I got my 7760 a week after launch, and haven't really been up to date with precision stuff ever since.

One of my biggest reasons for not wanting to upgrade is because of the removal of physical left/middle/right click buttons, a couple of keyboard layout changes from around the 7750 where already bad enough (no dedicated pg up/down keys, keyboard light fn key being moved to F5 key, when F5 used to be standalone, perfect for refreshing browsers) I've tried the all touchpad laptops at work, really didn't like them. I'll take physical buttons any day, or at least the option for people to choose, but I doubt that Dell would do that.

 

The only option at this point with physical touchpad buttons is the HP Zbook Fury 16 G9. With the A3000 or better GPU option it has a CPU+GPU vapor chamber which helps with thermals. It also has correct AC/DC loadline values out of the box so performance is closer to what you would expect (~20,000 CBR23 multi). It also happens to have a "always run the fans at idle" bios option which keeps its fan operation closer to how the Precision 7560 is.

 

Of course, its a different manufacturer so the ecosystem of accessories and software is a bit different. It also misses a few hardware features like the MUX option for the TB4 ports.

 

[Ionising_Radiation]

Gonna chip in with my usual wishlist (for the 7680, especially):

1. AMD CPU options (yes; I've asked this for ages, I don't think it'll happen, but who knows)
2. AMD GPU options (see 1.)
3. High-refresh rate, HDR-capable 16:10 display options (60 Hz is not a good look on a performance laptop when nearly every other gaming-ish notebook and the 7770 have 120/144 Hz+ displays)
4. 240 W USB-PD for charging the notebook. Still keep the barrel connector, but having one/two-port 240-480 W PD would be really good.
5. Improved thermals and performance tuning from the XX70 generation

[MyPC8MyBrain]

minimum 330w brick would be pre requisite for me before i would even consider this new platform,
a high refresh rate OLED with Touch screen would be a must option, a screen bezel refresh is well overdue too,
(the 7670 4k OLED with Touch doesn't feel too outdated but falls way behind the sleek looking XPS17 4k OLED with Touch screen)

[Aaron44126]

8 hours ago, Ionising_Radiation said:

240 W USB-PD for charging the notebook. Still keep the barrel connector, but having one/two-port 240-480 W PD would be really good.

 

Seems like Europe is going to force the world to move to USB-C on laptops (up to 240W), similarly to how they are forcing Apple to switch their iPhone over to USB-C.  So, I'm sure that we will see this "eventually", but I sort of doubt that it will come without being paired with a chassis refresh.  (I haven't been following it closely, but I think the USB-C rules in Europe for laptops are coming down a couple of years later than the rules for phones, which has a deadline of late 2024.)

 

Precision used to offer AMD GPUs as an option, but they stopped... around Precision 7730 or 7740?  I'm thinking that because AMD takes their sweet time getting mobile workstation GPUs out with their latest technology included, NVIDIA is pretty consistently ahead of them.  And because NVIDIA has a pretty broad range of performance options that you can pick from, it just doesn't make that much sense to offer anything from AMD.  (NVIDIA will have a few Lovelace mobile workstation GPUs ready for next spring for sure, but I'm not sure if AMD will even have RDNA3 in laptops at all by that point...?)

  

8 hours ago, MyPC8MyBrain said:

(the 7670 4k OLED with Touch doesn't feel too outdated but falls way behind the sleek looking XPS17 4k OLED with Touch screen)

 

XPS 17 doesn't have an OLED display.  I don't think that there are any 17" OLED panels out there yet.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

4 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

XPS 17 doesn't have an OLED display

it may been IPS, whatever they use on the XPS17 looked good enough to me,

 

4 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

I don't think that there are any 17" OLED panels out there yet

the Asus Zenbook 17" comes with OLED,

[TwistedAndy]

According to a recent leak, Raptor Lake HX will have 8P + 16E cores.

 

PS. Razer Blade 18 😉

[MyPC8MyBrain]

@TwistedAndy how do these scores fair? (not familiar with geekbench bench scores)

[TwistedAndy]

Those scores look pretty good. The desktop 13900K is faster in MT, but not that much (25-27K vs 20K). ST scores are nearly the same and slightly faster than ADL.

[MyPC8MyBrain]

interesting...
that CPU is already on Dell's price list, with 6 more open/unknown HX sku's (2 x i5 & 4 x i7 variants)
the i9-13900HX appears to be the highest upcoming i-9 Raptor Lake sku,

 

[pintie]

On 11/8/2022 at 5:45 PM, Aaron44126 said:

Seems like Europe is going to force the world to move to USB-C on laptops (up to 240W), similarly to how they are forcing Apple to switch their iPhone over to USB-C.  So, I'm sure that we will see this "eventually", but I sort of doubt that it will come without being paired with a chassis refresh.  (I haven't been following it closely, but I think the USB-C rules in Europe for laptops are coming down a couple of years later than the rules for phones, which has a deadline of late 2024.)

 

The USB Rule is not exclusive for Phones, its for all "portable" devices. So yes - it also applies for Notebooks.

If it is able to be charged with a plug - it has to be possible to charge it with usb-c. But you can also fit a connector like Dell.

And ! it only has to be able to be charged with USB. If you need a cable to run it, it could be anything.

And not to be confused... it only affects charging. You can use whatever you want for Data connections. (USB data standards and labels are a hole other story... at least they start to label it with 5gb/s ... 80 gb/s)

 

So Dell is already prepared. because we can charge the batterie with USB-C

 

I do have a 240W USB-C Cable and 140W charger and allready tried it... the 7670 only uses 100W. So its not 240W ready.

 

[MyPC8MyBrain]

@TwistedAndy
that's more like it 😉
Dell 7770 i9-12950HX vs. Razer 18 i9-13900HX  

below we can see clearly how the top 7770 with 12950HX score fairs against the new 13900HX score,
overall a 20% increase in performance (assuming that single 13900HX score is the highest it can go),
if this is the 13900HX average score than performance increase in comparison is more like +45%,
(average scores for the 7770 with 12950HX is about 14k on geekbench)
 

Intel Core i9-12950HX @ 2.49 GHz 16 Cores, 24 Threads (8E+8P)

Intel Core i9-13900HX @ 1.80 GHz 24 Cores, 32 Threads (16E+8P)

 

 

[MyPC8MyBrain]

 here we go...