Hands on Dell Precision 7710

You don't need ECC ram for online poker.


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Not required for poker, but I understood that he wanted ECC to lessen the chances of memory related crashes. Losing your seat midway in a high stake poker game could be costly if doing well. Not likely to happen though.

 

A dock is a convenient way to connect displays, keyboard, mouse, network cable, power cable, etc. in one go. You can use the current docking stations (e.g. Advanced E-Port II) or wait a little longer for the new Thunderbolt dock.

The docking connector on the bottom of the Precisions is located very close to the edge, which means you will need to use a spacer to fit the laptop properly on the E-Port dock.

The current Precisions are the last to have a docking connector on the bottom. Future Precisions can only use the Thunderbolt dock, so this would be the better choice for the future.

In your case, ECC memory doesn't make much sense. The Xeon E3-1535M is also not noticeably faster than the Core i7-6920HQ. I would go for the Core-i7 with 32GB non-ECC memory.

Go for an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD instead of a 2.5" SATA SSD. The NVMe interface is much faster than SATA.

The AMD FirePro W5170M or W7170M is probably your best choice. I don't know if these can drive three 4K/5K displays though. That requires a lot of bandwidth. Maybe someone with more experience can weigh in on this.

 

I say go with the NVidia Quadro so that you can have the CUDA support if you're running software that processes large amounts of data. It's not impossible that the software you're using may (in a future update) eventually use CUDA

 

Tembel needs to determine if the software or dev tools he/she will be using can benefit from Quadro.. Just to be clear, CUDA programming itself is not specific to a Quadro system. Pretty much the entire GeForce (non quadro) line of GPUs are supported for CUDA programming for the likes of deep learning. I've been dabbling with CUDA C (C++) and a GTX (non Quadro) and parallel computing for about a year now. Quadro wasn't required.


http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/cuda/faq

geforce GPUs with CUDA architecture:
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/cuda/supported-gpus

Quadro systems are ISV certified (unlike a Geforce system) for products that take advantage of CUDA and the double precision floating point. Products like Adobe Premier, Avid, Edius, etc and products like Solidworks, AutoCad etc can really benefit from Quadro. I prefer to use certified quadro system than a Geforce system. Peace of mind. Not that a non-quadro couldn't be used, but they are not ISV certified and they don't have double precision floating point. I don't fully understand all of the advantages of Quadro over Geforce, but that certification I do understand.

Quoted from DELL page...

What does ISV-certified mean?

• It means peace of mind knowing that Dell works with many independent software vendors (ISVs) to provide an exceptional, seamless user experience. To Dell, it means hundreds of engineering man-hours and rigorous testing that have been poured into Dell Precision™ workstations to optimize performance and reliability with leading industry applications.

 

Thanks for all the replies!

I agree I have no real need for this but if we expect it to save me a few crashes I'm willing to pay the extra cost.. ?

Are there different choices for a specific NVMe SSD?

The FirePro can do two for sure though right? Interesting differences between the 51 and 71?

I'm using a few stand alone small programs for this matter (PioSOLVER and Simple Postflop), I'm almost sure that at least at the moment they can't benefit from this and tend to believe that if this is niche/advanced/difficult this support won't be added?

If it has no disadvantages vs. the FirePro maybe just yes go for it ?

A few other questions I had -

Thanks again this is highly appreciated.

 

OEM choices ordering from Dell with your system build, as I'm doing: The PCIe NVMe m.2 SSD Dell labels as their "High Performance" (Samsung SM951). Other OEM choice is NOT labled as "High Performance" but still very good performance from what I understand (Samsung PM951). http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...l-m-2-ship-with-precision-7000-series.787370/

You could purchase a non-OEM PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD Samsung PM950 Pro off of Amazon or wherever and set it up yourself with OS, drivers, correct BIOS settings etc.. But I'll say this, there are a boat and butt load of people who are having issues setting up their systems using self installed NVMe SSDs. I'm not sure why that is but I guess BIOS settings and having proper RST software and following stringent procedures ( http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN300184/en ... and then follow along here at about step 85 or so... http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/HOW11493/en ... and then read up on this and the posts that follow it.... http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/7710-performance-problems.787109/page-2#post-10192323). Draw your own conclusions which NVMe is best for you. Good luck

Regarding if such things as ECC are the right choice or not. Go for it if you like. I just ordered a system with Xeon for the simple reason I'm tickled pink having a "Xeon" CPU in my laptop. I didn't even get it with ECC RAM. Do what makes you happy. $70-100 over 3-5 yrs, who cares.


as for AMD/ATI? I'm biased in that I had them in the past but wasn't happy with their drivers. Personal preference I always go with nvidia if I have the choice.

Regarding "ThinkPad" P50/P70. I liked them as IBM, but not so much now (zero affiliation with IBM now). Basically it comes down to personal preferences, do you like what you see?. I have older IBM thinkpads, and I loved them. But for past 10+ yrs I like Dell as a company and their products. The P70 has nice specs and extra drive bay and optical disc bay. But those extra drive bays only handle SATA III and not PCIe; so really only two PCIe bays max in the P70 vs 3 in the 7710. *most important I prefer Dell Pro Support

I'll post a link to a juvenile 7710 unbox photo shoot and video plus my thoughts after I get mine (I encourage all others to do the same because I've only seen two youtube vids on 7710[not counting dells vids] ), whenever it arrives.

 

ECC only fixes single bit errors. It will halt if there is a 2-bit error. The truth is, you're likely to have an error due to another system part than the memory, regardless of whether you choose Xeon or not.

If you go with aftermarket NVMe, get a 950 PRO. Order your Dell with the cheap 500GB drive. Delete the crapware, then use Samsung's cloning software to transfer to the 950PRO. Worked fine for me under Win10.

Never been a fan of ATI/AMD video cards, though as of late they seem to have an edge in DX performance, which is likely what you'll need. I don't think bandwidth is much a concern, but I'd opt for more graphics memory.

 

I'd strongly recommend just keeping the original drive stock, and then either removing the crapware after cloning, or better still just installing a clean windows onto the new SSD.

Being able to say "I restored an absolutely unmodified Dell image and the problem persists" is a VERY useful thing to be able to say to a tech on the phone, and it's not like a 500gb spinning-rust drive is good for much afterwards.

 

If you clone the HDD then delete the files afterwards you're going to end up with files everywhere. Not that anyone would defrag a SSD, but I'd rather keep everything tight so that when I add software it doesn't save in every nook and cranny I just deleted.

Besides, if someone needs to call a tech to resolve an issue pertaining to cloning and swapping out a hard drive, then maybe they should not do so themselves. Being the part is user upgradeable there should be no problem with tech support on a cloned drive. I refuse to pay 2-3 times market value for the NVMe because Dell installed it; but I realize that some would pay the premium. The 500GB HDD I have is way better than the crap recovery USB I foolishly bought, and I still saved. Then again, I'm sure for some, what's a couple hundred bucks when you're 3-4, even 7 grand in the tank....