Kaby Lake Precision pre-release discussion (5520 / 7520 / 7720)

You pay a huge premium for "maxing" out the options. The performance difference between the 3.1GHz CPU and 3.0 GHz CPU is very slight, but the price is like double for that .1 GHz. Also, opting for P4000 instead of P5000 made a huge price difference as well - I calculated a 10% difference in the cores and speed between P5000 and P4000, although the 8GB vs 16GB could be a factor for some use cases.

 

Sorry ment:
Radeon Pro WX 7100 vs. NVIDIA® Quadro P3000

 

P4000 is about 40% faster than P3000.

P5000 vs P4000
CUDA cores: 2048 vs 1792 (14.2% jump)
Clock speed: 1513 vs 1227 (23.3% jump)
Performance gain = 1.142 * 1.233 = another 40% jump from P4000 to P5000 (plus double vRAM)
But man, that price

The price will probably fall *slightly* over time. I kept an eye on the 7710 and every few months it would be a little cheaper... but I'm talking less than 10% over the course of a year. For the best price, it probably is best to call a rep up on the phone, and be sure to ask them to apply any current coupons. (Ask them to send you a quote so that you can see the full system specs, and make sure that you are buying what you asked for.)

The systems will show up on Dell Outlet in a few months (a good deal cheaper) if you are comfortable buying refurbished.

 

As of 1:00PM central time today:

Precision 7520 & 7720
Sorry, but this item is no longer available for purchase online. Please contact your sales representative for details on how to order.

 

Now that the Nvidia Quadro P3/4/5000 cards are available, do you think one of them may be added as an option on the 5520?

 

This won't be happening.

 

Dell chat person gave me a link to the configurator page for the 7520 - http://configure.us.dell.com/dellst...recision-15-7520-laptop&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04
I picked apart the URL and got the link for the 7720 - http://configure.us.dell.com/dellst...recision-17-7720-laptop&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04

 

According to Notebookcheck.net:

Quadro P5000 2048 @ 1164 - 1506 (Boost) MHz 256 Bit @ 6006 MHz
Quadro P4000 1792 @ 1202 MHz 256 Bit @ 6006 MHz

The P5000 has a lower base clock than the P4000, but it can boost to 1506. So, I guess the P5000 has a minimum 10% speed advantage on the P4000 without boost, but if it can maintain those boosts it'll be 43.2% faster for as long as the the 7720 can maintain the temperatures to allow that. With these numbers in hand, let's play with dollars!

P4000 is a $621 upgrade, P5000 is a $1450.30 upgrade (does it really need the thirty cents?), or 2.33X the cost of the upgrade for a P4000, for a speed boost of 10% - 43.2% and double the RAM, and that boost will be dependent on the thermal load of the chassis since this really does not count as "throttling" if it's not running at max boost 100% of the time.

Now, comparing to the specs of non-Quadro laptop part (because it's fun), I'm beginning to see why the P3000 is not listed as "VR Ready" even with the same core count - the ECC memory on these cards is running at 75% of the speed of the consumer parts:

GeForce GTX 1070 (Laptop) 2048 @ 1443 - 1645 (Boost) MHz 256 Bit @ 8000 MHz
GeForce GTX 1060 (Desktop) 1280 @ 1506 - 1708 (Boost) MHz 192 Bit @ 8000 MHz

Against a desktop 1060, the P4000 is 1.5% slower when the desktop is at max boost, or 11% faster when the desktop part is unboosted - I'd say the P4000 pulls ahead on average. In this case, the raw speed of a P5000 really is between the desktop 1060 and desktop 1070, but considering the power requirements for a desktop 1070, I'd have to say they have to really carefully bin those P5000's.

 

The cooling systems in the larger Precisions are really good. Traditionally, the larger 15" and 17" Precisions are built to be able to maintain the max "turbo" speed for both the CPU and GPU, indefinitely, as long as you don't block the air exhaust ports or something. This is machines like the 7520 and 7720, not necessarily the 5520. We won't know for sure until someone gets one to test, but I think it is a pretty safe bet that the P5000 will be able to run at full 1500MHz speed without throttling. Your fans will be making some noise, though.

I look at it like this... Thinking more about how much it costs to move from one level up to the next, rather than how much it costs to upgrade from the base model.

Say you want to go from P3000 to P4000. That is just $280 for 40% GPU performance improvement. Not bad, I'd say it is a no-brainer if you are going to use the GPU.
Now say you want to go from P4000 to P5000. That's an additional $829 for an additional 40% GPU performance improvement. Ehhhh....
Still, if you are going to use this machine for several years, you might be kicking yourself down the line for not springing for the best GPU. 40% is a non-trivial increase, and GPUs are still making big year-over-year gains in performance (so they go "obsolete" more quickly than other components)... If you have a GPU-heavy workload, it could keep the machine relevant for an additional generation.

This is typical computing though, and it has been the case with the 17" Precision systems (and their competitors) for the many generations that I have been watching... The higher you want to go, the more it costs (sort of exponential on the high-end), you can see the same thing on the CPU side.

 

I placed an order for 7520 on March 21st, and the status is still 'confirmed', and expected to ship on March 30. Is this normal?