Hands on Dell Precision 7710

Yes, too bad. And now we can expect at least 3 generations of 17" Precisions with this internal storage setup, I guess.

Hope that larger m.2 PCIe SSDs will show up.
Not sure why limiting m.2 to 2280 instead of something longer like 22120 to get more chips on the sticks.

 

Very true, and I'm not suggesting they do away with the extra M.2 in favor of a second 2.5" drive bay, but I can think of a few reasons that a second 2.5" drive would be handy:
* Transitioning from an old system, if you have existing SSDs, putting them to use in the 7710 can lower the initial purchase cost (you can buy M.2 drives later or wait for them to get cheaper).
* Bulk storage, 2.5" HDDs still win here if you have stuff that you'd like to store but don't necessarily need for it to be fast.

 

I use my laptop for development and like a lot of storage for test VMs. So yes, I see that NVMe drives will be 3x faster but currently they are 2x more expensive and store up to 0.5 TB compared to 2 TB 2.5". So 2x m.2 and 2x 2.5" would have been nice for me to keep existing SSDs and add m.2 step by step.

 

Hi guys, some question,
keeping in mind my use is lightroom (raw photo postproduction - sometimes also 42mpx - and obviously their final exportation in jpeg), photoshop and basic 4k video editing (from action camera).

panel:
in Italy I can choose between UltraSharpTM IPS FHD (1.920x1.080) da 17,3" and UltraSharpTM IGZO UHD (3.840x2.160) da 17,3"
Does the 4k panel worth? Keeping also in mind it should be useful to calibrate it. (i1pro xrite)

RAM:
ECC introduced. Useful only for server/datacenter or also useful for us?

Graphics
AMD FirePro™ W5170M con GDDR5 da 2 GB or more expensive Nvidia M3000 ?

CPU
I expect Xeon E3 vs i7 for sure. Is there any good comparison between them? I'm also seeing is "in arrive" the Intel Xeon Ex-xxx Z3+ quad-core Xeon da x,xx GHz
Will be this Z3 very better than E3 ?

Thanks in advance,
ciao

 

I've got the 3K (3200x1800) screen on my M3800, and as a pure amateur photographer, it is amazingly better than FHD. 4K would be even better, and even more so for 4K video editing. ISTR, the color gamut is also better on the IGZO. As a photographer, you really want this if you can afford it.

Transient memory errors bad enough to notice are quite rare, but they can crash your whole system or corrupt data. How much work do you lose if something crashes? If it's mostly saved to disk automatically, and it's not too much of your time for an occasional crash, it's something of an expensive luxury.

For people doing professional engineering or architecture running software costing many times what the machine does, and who bill at $200+/hour, it's well worth it. As a software developer. I'd never bother with it. For you, not sure.

I wouldn't rule out the AMD W7170M. My impression is that Photoshop and Lightroom do fine with consumer GPUs, and the AMD vs. NVidia difference doesn't favor the NVidias as heavily as it does on engineering/CAD/etc software... but this is one are you will probably want to do your own due diligence.

If you need ECC RAM, the Xeon is mandatory. If you DON'T need ECC RAM, the Xeon is a waste of money -- the i7-6820HQ is a whopping 0.2ghz slower, and much less expensive.

You DON'T want the i5; still quad-core, but moderately slower in clock than either the Xeon or the i7, and a smaller cache and no hyperthreading. (If they offer the i7-6700HQ where you are, that also has the smaller cache.)

Haven't seen anything explaining this.

 

If your raw footage is in 4K it would be nice to be able to see it in that resolution, unless you plan to remain plugged in.

Forget ECC as the benefits probably wouldn't outweigh the costs. Likewise with Xeon. Pretty much a Core i7 if you don't use ECC. And the 200MHz speed bump is only for single threaded applications. The multi core speeds are pretty close to Core i7, and Lightroom utilizes multi cores.

As to video cards, either should be fine. I prefer NVidia for OpenGL stuff, but Adobe uses DirectX, so as long as you get at least 2GB you should be good.

If you read other posts you'll find it cheaper to order with the cheap 500GB HDD, and add a 950 PRO NVMe after, then you can use the 2.5" SSD of your choice after migrating the OS to the NVMe drive.

 

Question on the power brick. This is what kills things for me, size/weight and portability. I have a 2016 Alienware 17 R3, with a dell 240v power brick, which is tiny compared to this. It has a barrel plug as well, but this one looks smaller than mine. Is there a reason that the precision brick is quite a bit larger than the 240v Alienware brick?

Thinking of either keeping my Alienware 'and' getting a precision 7000 (or perhaps Lenovo p50). Just not enough reviews on these new workstations. I video/photo edit, majorly, which is why I have the alienware (4k screen and battery life are awesome). Came from a MSI GT70 dominator pro with crap 1080p and horrible battery.

My current workstation is the W550s, which is awesome laptop, but ulv isn't cutting it. For work I run multiple vm's (minimum of 4 usually) or I'm 3D CAD work, and/or other very taxing programs. Now I'm using my Alienware, which is powerful and cools nice and quiet, but as nice as it is, its not that 'workstation' feel.

So not only trying to decide to take back/trade Alienware for a workstation, or to keep Alienware and get a 2nd but workstation. If then Lenovo vs Dell. The Lenovo looks nice, but I'm leaning more Dell (power brick is huge con, so is lack of thunderbolt)

Any thoughts?

 

Thunderbolt will be available in a few weeks...
When I got my M6700 I got three extra power bricks (not too expensive on eBay), and I left them places where I frequently use the system. So, I don't have to worry about carrying around the huge brick very often.

 

Not sure if anyone else is getting blue screens when they plug in an external USB HDD, but at least in my case it is being caused by an IRQ conflict with either the Parallel Port IRQ or the Serial Port IRQ. I disabled both in BIOS and have not had one since.

 

True, but at $900 discount on model I want w/o, only guessing it's to make way for thunderbolt included models. But that is very true fact.

Power brick is big, as I travel for work 'alot', and always at customer sites often without access to power (or cell reception) for the greater part of day. Which is why w550s with 3 external batteries was awesome (charger was size pack of smokes also)

I just don't get same power output, yet gaming vs workstation, huge size difference. Plus, you'd think it'd be other way around. Workstations usually for engineering that need power on the go. Gaming, usually for those that sit and game.

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