Precision 7530 & Precision 7730 owner's thread

Thanks for the clarification. Apart from copying large files once in a while, I don't really need 40Gbps right now, but I plan on using this computer for the next 8-10 years and I wanted to make sure I can upgrade it as much as possible, e.g. with an external GPU. But since it seems to be a common design limitation, I'm not going to search for a different laptop.

Question, though: would it only be bottlenecked when loading data to/from the CPU, and could it get up to 40Gbps when e.g. copying a large file from an external TB3 drive directly to an internal drive on the chipset?

 

That's disappointing. It does sound like these (expensive) machines have quality control issues. In addition to the dock connection being super sensitive, I'm finding that one of my USB ports is not reliable. I thought that might be the case from when I first received my 7730 but ignored it and now that I need that port, it's flaky.

 

All of those bytes would still have to go through the CPU on the way through, I believe.

 

While I do not know about this use case, I would surely hope not! It would kill the entire reason of having a point to point interface like PCIe!
Though, a lot of file system work is done on the CPU, despite the presence of multiple ARM cores on SSD controllers (probably because most home storage is done in blocks, not "files"). I could definitely see a CPU having to do a lot of unnecessary heavy lifting just to do a data transfer.

 

So, @Aaron44126, @jeremyshaw and @tem2...

I attempted a disk-to-disk copy (of a *ahem* certain file)—this was from a 1 TB WD Black NVMe to a completely empty 500 GB WD Black NVMe, so there should be little if no bottlenecks:

It's clear that over an extended period of time, the disk transfer rate never even hit a single PCIe 3.0 lane's bandwidth of 985 MB/s, let alone the full 3400 MB/s promised by either drive.

At any rate, the 40 Gbps promised by TB3 includes the bandwidth of a DisplayPort signal, which is output by the GPU and not the CPU. If you're outputting 4K 8bpc RGB at 60 Hz, that requires a bandwidth of 3840 × 2160 × 24 × 60 = 11.94 Gbps = 1.492 GB/s. If you want 4K HDR 10bpc at a blistering 144 Hz, that's an enormous 35.83 Gbps, just for a video-out signal.

File transfers are the least of our worries, really, because 90% of personal computing workloads are 'bursty' in nature. Quick ramp up, quick ramp down. Furthermore, most internet connections haven't even hit 1 Gbps yet. 10 Gbps is only just reaching mass availability, as are the associated NICs. So I think these will certainly last a while.

 

Yes, I basically see the flow as the OS reading blocks from one drive into memory and then flushing them out to the other drive, so the CPU is involved in the whole process. I don't know of another way that you can tell one drive "hey please send these blocks straight to another drive". Because of this I think that best case is you could get two lanes of bandwidth in disk-to-disk transfer (if four lanes is the max total, it will need two lanes for reading and two lanes for writing).

That said, I think that a copy speed of nearly 1 GB per second is pretty good, you'd have to be doing some serious data work in order for that to feel "slow". (I can see, maybe dealing with huge databases, VM images, or backup files.)

 

Hey guys, need ur opinion about new laptop
I work usually on Adobe After Effect, considering about Acer Predator Helios 500 (i7 8750h, 32gb ram, 1070, 144hz 1080p) with Precision 7730 (i7 8850h, 32gb ram, P3200, 1080p), any advise ?
Many thanks

 

And if ~ 1 GB/s felt slow for said data work, I'm sure the operator in question would've moved to a server/HEDT platform like Xeon Silver+, Core i9 Extreme, AMD Ryzen Threadripper, or Epyc. These are all really wonderful options for data hoarders who want full-fledged NVMe setups. With 60+ PCIe lanes, one can connect 15 NVMe drives and achieve absolutely monstrous bandwidths of ~ 50 GB/s, effectively filling terabyte-sized drives in mere seconds.

 

Of the two, I'd definitely lean towards the 7730. You'll likely pay more, but after years of using Precisions, I don't have any real complaints with Dell ProSupport - they've sent technicians to my office multiple times to fix things that went wrong within the warranty period. It's also physically very easy to carry and use, as a laptop - the Acer looks huge and unwieldy. You'll pay a premium, but for a machine that you use for work to get stuff done, it's not bad compared to other vendors.

 

I run linux exclusively. So I suppose this is hardware-related, not OS-related. It could be a faulty cable or mobo, a bad design or a fragile connector. I guess you guys have an dock with an up-to-date firmware?