new Dell Precision 5510 (Twin of XPS15)

I had placed a new order and ship date is not until February with similar configuration.

 

Just wanted to let people know that the 5510 does not support ECC memory. Not sure where this started but just wanted to set the record straight.

madebydell.com

 

Are you sure?? then what's the point of using a Xeon processor.

 

That's Dell-Mano_G, Precision product manager. Should know a thing or two.

 

Hi Mano_G
Could you let us in on, if It's a hardware limitation?
Do you expect to offer the 5510 with the new Xeon E3-1545M when Intel releases it next year?

 

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Does that matter? Well maybe based on what you're doing. If you are not using discrete graphics then maybe not. If you're running DirectX apps then maybe the XPS15 is better. For OpenGL apps you'd want the ISV certification of the Precision, especially if you're software costs way more than the machine and you need to know it will run. The motherboard is irrelevant to the decision. Professional graphics cards or consumer grade? Quadro and FireGL, aside from different BIOS than GeForce and Radeon, have double-precision FPU enabled. Maybe that slows them down in games that mostly do NOT run in double-precision. The naked eye probably couldn't tell the difference unless you had a side-by-side screenshot comparison.

But my best guess is that the Skylake Xeon and Corei-7 are pin-compatible, and aside from the graphics options, mobo BIOS, and chipset, they are likely very similar. Heck the fact that you can run non-ECC with the Xeon should be a hint.

 

Aside from the BIOS, and maybe the chipset, I bet the mobos are pretty identical. The I7 and E1505 are pin-compatible and in fact people have been swapping Xeons for Core i7 in X99 motherboards for a while now. The memory controller resides on the CPU and the ECC unit is disabled on the Core I7. Just because it is not officially "supported" doesn't mean it won't function as intended.

In fact if you go to Intel's website you'll see the E1505 and i7-6820HQ are almost exactly the same. The Xeon clocks 100MHz faster but big deal. The ECC memory is about 3-4% slower. You even lose Intel's Identity Protection on-chip.

To me, if you play mainly games, specifically DirectX games and apps, then you're better off with XPS15 and GTX960M. If you use mostly OpenGL and run apps listed in ISV, get the Precision 15. I would bet ECC memory works in Precision 15 regardless of what is "supported".

 

Another reason to get the Precision 5510 over the XPS 15 is that the 5510 is more configurable while the XPS only has four fixed configurations (in Europe at least). None of the XPS configurations were acceptable for me, so I ordered the precision, getting the configuration I want.

 

In the Del US site they have four basic configurations, that can be each customized (to an extent.) I suppose this varies by country. Interestingly, I remember seeing a page for the 7710 in Dell Belize before Dell US! Weird.