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

I have been following this thread and the hands on 7710 thread for quite a while reading all the good and bad. I am curious what made you people choose the dell precision over the lenovo p70? From every review I have seen the lenovo beats the dell hands down, from notebookcheck.net, and other laptop review sites, but also actual engineering and cad sites that have reviewed both machines. I am not here to bag on the dell quite the opposite, I want to know what made you guys choose the dell when everything out there seems to say the lenovo is the better buy in regards to build and ports ( 2 thunderbolts) docking station where you don't have to plug in the charger to the laptop to use it, battery life, more travel with the keyboard etc etc So please everyone let me know what you guys know that everybody else has missed. thanks inadvance.

 

Thanks, I guess we'll have to wait for Rec. 2020 and/or HDR Ready displays (not sure what notebook manufacturers are going to promote) to get back to 10bits, maybe even 12bit. I'm not holding my breath on the later though, after all they (HP and DELL) downgraded from 10bit to 8bit when they moved to 4K (because cheapness), so I can only guess that they'll take it one step at a time.

 

The Lenovo P70 is a great machine. My choice of Dell over Lenovo comes mostly from little things. The systems have pretty much the same specs and use the same internal components. In many cases one could be swapped for the other without much of an issue.

First off, Dell business support is really great. I know that there are some people who have had mixed experiences, but I think that most people will agree that if you pay for ProSupport you get awesome service... You can call in and get a competent English speaker with no wait, and if you need hardware service, they don't hassle you to try every little thing before dispatching a tech with the part, next day. For a single-system purchase you may never have an issue and this could be a moot point, but if you are supporting a business with many PCs, you bet that you want to get help when you need it, hassle free. (Add to that we actually have one of the Precision product managers on these forums answering questions and taking feedback — in this very thread even — I always thought that was cool.)

Lenovo on the other hand has done some offputting things in the past that make me shy away from them, like "beaconing" (causing government agencies some concern) or installing systems with compromising https man-in-the-middle software (to serve up ads?) -- yes, you can remove crap like that, but it isn't something people should have to worry about, and the fact that it was there at all makes the company come across as somewhat shady.

Claiming that Lenovo has better build quality I think is questionable. The 7000-series Precision is a great build and cooling is top notch. If there is any difference between the two, it is minimal.

I'll admit that I'm not super familiar with Lenovo docks but I question the "don't have to plug in the charger" claim. You can use a physical ePort dock with a Dell system and you will not have to plug in a separate charger. Same for the Thunderbolt TB16 dock, but you will get throttled speeds in that case, as it can only deliver 130W of power over the Thunderbolt cable. Does Lenovo have a Thunderbolt dock that can offer 200W+ via the dock cable? Otherwise they would have to have throttling as well, and I can't see how the situation would be any different than with Dell — use a physical dock with full power and no extra power cable, or use a Thunderbolt dock and have to plug in two cables. (Googling indicates that the Lenovo Thunderbolt dock can only push 60W over the dock cable, which looks like a clear win for Dell on this side, but maybe I am missing something here.)

For tweaking/futureproofing, if you buy into Lenovo you are resigned to never being able to install a GPU better than the ones that originally shipped with the system. My understanding is that they whitelist GPUs in the BIOS on the Lenovo side. With Dell there is a reasonable chance that a newer MXM card will work (with minor tweaking perhaps) in an older system. We have a number of threads reporting successful GPU upgrades in the Precision line, which can add a few years to a systems life as GPUs tend to become obsolete more quickly than other components these days, due to strong year-over-year performance gains that we are no longer seeing on the CPU or storage side.

Some things are clearly better on the Lenovo side. Two thunderbolt ports is cool (although I have not yet had a need to connect more than one Thunderbolt/USB-C device at once), and having the optical drive (or additional SATA bay with the caddy) could be handy. Dell has also somewhat goofed up the keyboard with the current generation (many users here agree).


You are talking about comparing two of the very best systems out there, even if one is generally regarded as better, I don't think that you can make a "hands down" claim... the difference will be rather minimal in reality.

 

So are you saying there is or is not a dock where you dont have to also plug in the laptop charger for eaither?

 

The no-charger dock that I am talking about is the PR02X. The dock is plugged into power. You set the laptop on top of it and the laptop has full power. No extra power cable is required for the laptop.
http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/accessories/apd/331-6304

Dell sells these things for $200 but you can find them on eBay in the $30 range. Dell has been using the same design for many generations (going at least as far back as the Precision M6400 in what, 2008?), and they also work with many Latitude systems.

Lenovo has a similar contraption. I don't think that it has the same cross-model and cross-generational compatibility (but I'm not as familiar with the Lenovo docks).
http://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/access...l-docks/TP-Workstation-Dock-230W/p/40A50230US

Thunderbolt docks are becoming common but I'm not aware of any that can power a high-end workstation class machine with a single cable. You will have to connect both the dock cable and the laptop's power cable.

 

This includes the 7710 or 7720 in regards to the pro2x yoru talking about?

 

Also can you post a link to the section where people have ugradeded the mxm cards please i have not been able to find that.

 

7710 and 7720 both support the PR02X dock. (Note that the model number contains a "zero" and not an "oh".)

Installed Quadro M5000M in the Dell Precision M6700.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/dell-precision-m6700-nvidia-quadro-m5000m.782120/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/quadro-m5000m-on-m6700.783303/

Installed GeForce 980M in the Dell Precision M6700.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...0-owners-thread.682401/page-306#post-10165268

I haven't seen any upgrade stories for the 7710 yet. Newer GPUs are only just now appearing.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-E-Port-...&qid=1492455808&sr=1-1&keywords=331-6304&th=1

for the 7710/7720 do i want the 130w or 240w version and "e-port" or "e-port+" i dont see the differnce

 

You need 240W for the 7710/7720. These systems require a 240W power adapter for full performance.

The difference between "E-port" (PR03X) and "E-port Plus" (PR02X) is which ports are available. For example, PR03X only has one DVI/DisplayPort but PR02X has two.