Hands on Dell Precision 7710

High Performance is the PM951 as long as you get the 512GB or 1TB. The 256GB is lower speed.
Very High Performance is the SM951, but I don't know if it comes in 1TB right now.

The PM and SM 961 will be arriving soon. You might get a good price on the 951 series as they are moved out.

 

Hi Bokeh,


Yes, through the search here I found the same answer that you point out. And yes, I just saw a price drop on the PM951 1TB and took advantage of it for the third drive (my machine came with two)

I have now 3 x PM951 1TB drives + 1 x Interposer. I am going to put them in Raid 0. Concerning this Raid array:

1. Will the performance be meaningfully higher than that of a 2 x PM951 Raid 0 array?
2. Is it a better arrangement (performance wise) a 2 x PM951 Raid 0 array + 1 x PM951 standalone drive? If so, which one for OS + programs and which one for data (my data needs are small)
3. Can you please refresh my memory as to the right settings in BIOS for the Raid 0 array? I have worked with Raid 0 arrays for years on Precision Workstations but it seems that this 7710 has more settings.

Thank you as always for your help and expert opinion.

 

In the BIOS, Settings -> System configuration -> SATA operation -> make sure it is set to RAID on

Do an F12 boot, then under OTHER OPTIONS choose Device Configuration. That will get you to the hardware RAID settings. My understanding is that stripe size settings are not a big deal with NVMe drives, so you can leave it set at the default.

The most performance should come from having 3 of the PM951 drives in RAID 0, but I have not been able to fully test this. My system has 2X SM951@ 512GB and 1X PM951@1TB. I currently use the 2X SM951 in a RAID 0 array and have been very happy with the performance and stability.

 

Perfect, it seems simple enough.

It will take me some time because I am travelling but I will report back on the performance of the 3 drive array.

Thanks.

 

So, even though a few random Dell reps have said thunderbolt 3 -> eGPU is possible, we don't know for sure because there's no way to test it yet?
Also, has anyone heard if Dell will be releasing any TB3 eGPU docks this year for use with precision laptops and others like the XPS 9550?

 

I don't think Dell has any plans to release eGPU docks. There has certainly not been any comment from them on something like this. You'll have to look to third parties for an eGPU enclosure.

 

Alienware has an external graphics enclosure that currently uses a proprietary connection, so it is on Dell's radar. Hopefully they will update it to use the standard thunderbolt port.

 

I quickly glanced over an article about that Alienware eGPU enclosure last weekend. Seems the proprietary connection it employs is meant to address shortcomings of the thunderbolt 3 when used with eGPU. I didn't research or read further to find out specifics. Sounds interesting though. I wonder if our current laptops could even benefit from such an enclosure considering the proprietary connection on that enclosure addresses shortcomings of the Thunderrbolt 3 eGPU solutions. In other words, even if they do adopt a more standard Type C connection on that alien enclosure would there be any benefit without the mystery sauce in the proprietary connection?

 

Performance Numbers from a 512GB PM951 in the 7710 M.2 to 2.5" interposer -

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2 x64 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1651.500 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 601.384 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 568.026 MB/s [138678.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 564.914 MB/s [137918.5 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 1211.743 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 599.695 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 46.153 MB/s [ 11267.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 186.941 MB/s [ 45639.9 IOPS]

Test : 4096 MiB [E: 0.0% (0.2/476.8 GiB)] (x1) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/06/27 12:16:40
OS : Windows 10 Enterprise [10.0 Build 14372] (x64)

 

Thunderbolt 3 actually has more bandwidth than the Alienware eGPU. It was not about addressing shortcomings of TB3, it was about TB3 not being ready yet.